UBRARYOFPWNSPN 


NOV  I  7  2003 


TUFfii  nfilCAl  SEMINARY 


^ 


'C 


4 


APR  13  1939 


text   ^Vg^tn^t 


OR    COMPANIONS    OF 
THE  PRESENT  CHRIST 


&,   Vision 


BY 

COURTENAY    H.   FENN 


3& 


PHILADELPHIA 

{&&*  Westminster  press 

1910 


Copyright,  1910,  by 

The    Trustees    of    The    Presbyterian    Board    of 
Publication  and  Sabbath  School  Work 


Published  February,  1910 


OVER    AGAINST    THE    TREASURY 


INTRODUCTION 

BY  ROBERT  E.  SPEER 

HOW  earnestly  we  will  put  a  case  depends  on 
how  earnestly  we  feel  about  it.  If  we  have 
no  ardent  and  glowing  love  for  Christ,  and 
no  sense  of  the  unique  wonder  of  the  treasure 
which  is  in  the  gospel  and  is  nowhere  else,  and 
no  yearning  toward  mankind,  so  satisfied  with 
what  it  has  and  yet  so  incomplete  without  Christ, 
and  no  deep  fear  of  the  infinite  loss  of  ail  Christ- 
lessness,  we  shall  be  able  to  look  at  the  whole 
missionary  idea  di^  a+ely  ar'1  to  speak  of  it 
with  calmly  modi    .,  ts 

are  aflame  with 
we  hold  Christ  in  any  uni  , 

tion  and  believe  the  gospel,  and  the  goppel  aio  , 
to  be  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation,  and  m^n 
and  nations  to  be  lost  men  and  nations,  astray  from 
the  true  way  and  missing  their  goal  and  their  life, 
then  we  shall  speak  out  with  ardor  and  conviction, 
and  shall  set  the  cause  in  some  such  place  as  it 
held  in  the  mind  of  Christ,  and  as  it  has  always 
held  in  the  thought  of  God. 

We  may  put  our  conviction  in  reasoned  argu- 
ment or  in  statement  of  fact,  or  we  may,  if  we  have 
the  imagination  for  it,  put  it  in  some  such  vivid 
form  as  that  in  which  Dr.  Fenn  has  cast  it  in  this 
little  book.     When  it  is  put  in  this  last  way,  it  may 


OVER   AGAINST    THE    TREASURY 


be  that  the  mood  out  of  which  the  dream  springs 
is  necessary  to  appreciate  the  dream.  But  the 
truth  and  the  appeal  are  there,  whether  appreciated 
or  not.  And  I  think  everyone  who  values  the 
saving  of  men  as  the  Saviour  valued  it,  and  to 
whom  heroism  and  faith  appeal,  will  be  moved  by 
this  vivid  picture.  If  the  appeal  which  it  makes 
has  a  tremor  in  it  and  moves  with  a  thrill  upon 
our  hearts,  that  is  the  merit  of  it.  If  we  are 
unresponsive  to  it,  do  we  not  need  to  look  in  upon 
our  own  minds  to  see  whether  we  have  found  or 
have  lost  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ,  who  being 
in  the  form  of  God  counted  not  equality  with 
God  a  thing  to  be  grasped,  but  emptied  himself, 
taking  the  form  of  a  servant,  and  becoming 
obedient  unto  death,  yea,  the  death  of  the  cross? 
This  is  the  solemn  question  with  which  Dr. 
Fenn's  vivid  and  moving  appeal  confronts  us. 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


FOREWORD 


THE  author  is  aware  that  this  is  by  no  means 
the  first  " vision"  of  the  visible  presence  of 
Him  who,  though  invisible,  is  yet  as  really 
present  in  his  church  as  though  the  eye  of  the 
flesh  could  see  his  glorious,  loving  face,  and  the 
ear  of  the  flesh  could  hear  that  sweetest,  truest 
voice  that  ever  man  heard.  He  has  read  several 
of  these,  and  among  them  some  which  have  stirred 
the  world. 

The  present  story — if  such  it  may  be  called — 
is  the  outgrowth  of  a  conviction,  dating  back 
to  his  earliest  ministry,  and  even  to  his  student 
life,  that  such  recognition  of  the  presence  of 
Christ  in  the  daily  life  as  is  here  described,  such 
" practice  of  the  presence  of  God"  in  Christ,  such 
individual,  personal  incarnating  of  the  promised 
Holy  Spirit,  to  reassure  us  that  he  is  something 
more  than  an  effluence  or  an  influence,  is  the  only 
thing  that  will  put  life  into  all  the  energies  and 
activities  and  enterprises  of  the  church,  making 
them  something  more  than  societies  and  associa- 
tions and  movements,  namely,  powers  for  the 
evangelization  of  the  world  and  the  establishment 
of  the  kingdom  of  our  God  and  of  his  Christ. 
That  is  why  the  world  has  been  stirred  by  such 
ideal  presentations  of  this  truth:  they  have  been 
the  revelation  of  an  unrealized,  unappropriated, 


4 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


mighty  force.  The  church  has  been  slow  in  per- 
forming its  part  under  the  great  commission 
because  it  has  only  imperfectly  realized  that 
Jesus  Christ  meant  what  he  said  when  he  prom- 
ised his  disciples,  "And  lo,  I  am  with  you  always, 
even  unto  the  end  of  the  world."  The  difficulties 
of  the  church  vanish  when  that  is  realized;  the 
excuses  of  the  church  are  silenced  in  the  blush 
of  shame  when  that  becomes  the  most  real  fact 
in  our  possession;  and  all  the  work  of  the  church 
acquires  a  tenfold  effectiveness  when  each  man 
asks  himself,  "What  would  Jesus  do  in  my 
place?"  and  does  it. 

Fifteen  years  of  contact  with  the  heathen  world 
convince  one  of  the  unspeakable  need,  of  the 
critical  opportunity,  and  of  the  utter  inadequacy 
of  present  methods  and  means.  But  with  each 
missionary  on  the  field,  and  each  Christian  at 
home,  a  real  companion  of  the  present  Christ, 
the  time  would  not  be  long  in  coming  when  "the 
earth  shall  be  filled  with  the  knowledge  of  the 
glory  of  Jehovah,  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea." 


&on*siM^ZZ~t  ^vo.'UT^ 


Peking,  China. 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


^O 


TO  LIVE  IS  CHRIST" 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;    I  died 

With  him  who  once  was  crucified. 

The  old  I  died;    the  new  with  him  revived; 

My  life  is  now  from  him  alone  derived. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;    his  life 
Has  come  to  end  the  bitter  strife 
Of  all  the  evil  with  the  good  in  me, 
And  give  me  sure  and  perfect  victory. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ,  not  self: 

The  world,  its  pleasures,  honors,  pelf, 

I  count  but  very  dross,  their  brightness  dim 

When  once  compared  with  my  new  view  of  him. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;   my  pride 
Has  shrunk  and  vanished,  placed  beside 
That  great  Humility  which  brought  him  down 
From  heaven's  glory  to  a  thorny  crown. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;    that  foe, 

My  old-time  temper,  source  of  woe 

To  me  and  mine,  has  given  place  to  his; — 

And  meek  and  gentle  Jesus'  temper  is. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;    my  will, 

Unbroken,  strong,  determined  still, 

Is  yet  transfused  with  Christ,  his  loving  voice 

Become  my  arbiter  of  every  choice. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;   his  peace, 
Within  my  heart,  has  caused  to  cease 
The  fret  and  burden  of  the  daily  care;  — 
The  cure  for  worry  is  the  life  of  prayer. 


vrzrr 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


To  me  to  live  is  Christ;  the  pain, 
Before  so  bitter,  now  is  gain. 
With  him  to  suffer,  with  him  bear  the  cross, 
How  great  a  joy  in  what  I  once  called  loss! 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;   his  power 

Is  grace  sufficient  for  each  hour. 

Whate'er  the  work,  where'er  the  way  may  lie, 

I  cannot  falter  with  the  Master  nigh. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;   his  love 
Constraineth  me,  that  I  should  move 
To  save  the  lost,  to  love  the  sinner  vile, 
Remembering  that  I  too  sinned  erstwhile. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;    O  Death! 

There  is  no  sting  now  in  thy  breath. 

Jesus  has  conquered  Death,  that  last  of  foes; 

Abounding  Life  forever  with  him  rose. 

To  me  to  live  is  Christ;   O  Life 

Of  glory  at  the  close  of  strife! 

With  Christ  forever,  bliss  beyond  compare! 

'Tis  gain  to  die,  for  Life  beginneth  there. 

— C.  H.  F. 


V. 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


Z3 


CHAPTER  I 

IT  was  the  Saturday  before  Foreign  Mission 
Sunday  in  the  Westminster  Presbyterian 
Church  of  Jaconsett.  The  church  still  ad- 
hered to  the  "good  (?)  old  custom"  of  taking  one 
offering  a  year  for  the  cause,  and  that  toward  the 
end  of  April.  It  was  not  a  deliberate  attempt  to 
keep  the  Foreign  Board  on  the  anxious  seat  until 
the  end  of  the  fiscal  year,  but  simply  a  custom  of 
long  standing.  The  church  had  been  greatly 
prospered,  for  Jaconsett  was  a  growing  city,  and 
its  expansion  had  all  been  in  the  direction  of 
Westminster  Church,  which  had  now  enrolled 
a  membership  of  eight  hundred  and  twenty,  the 
additions  for  the  year  having  been  ninety-five, 
seventy-six  of  them  by  letter  from  other  churches. 
It  was  the  fourth  year  of  the  pastorate  of  the 
Rev.  John  Stanton,  a  young  man  who  had  mani- 
fested an  increasing  pulpit  power,  and  was  much 
thought  of  by  his  people  for  his  social  qualities. 
During  his  senior  year  in  the  seminary  he  had 
been  seriously  considering  the  needs  of  the  foreign 
field,  when  he  was  called,  quite  unexpectedly,  to  a 
flourishing  church  in  the  manufacturing  town  of 
Denton.  The  call  to  the  foreign  work  seeming  to 
be  a  more  indefinite  one,  and  the  parents  of  his 
fiancee  being  opposed  to  her  going  abroad,  he  had 
concluded  that  an  equally  great  opportunity  for 


OVER   AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


the  use  of  his  talents  offered  itself  in  Denton, 
whence  after  a  few  years  he  was  called  to  Jacon- 
sett.  His  ministry  had  not  been  unfruitful,  so 
far  as  numbers  were  concerned;  yet  he  had  never 
felt  altogether  at  ease  in  his  heart  as  to  the  de- 
cision made  on  leaving  the  seminary.  He  la- 
mented the  fact  that  all  his  efforts  to  increase  his 
church's  interest  in  foreign  missions  had  resulted 
in  so  little;  yet  he  was  sometimes  more  than 
dimly  conscious  of  the  fact  that  he  was  embar- 
rassed in  his  appeals  for  this  cause  by  the  uncom- 
fortable intruding  thought:  "Why  did  you  not 
heed  the  call  yourself?  How  can  you  plead  with 
your  people  for  men  and  money,  when  you  might 
have  been  one  of  the  men  yourself?" 

There  was  not,  in  the  nervelessness  of  his  ap- 
peals, that  element,  not  unknown  in  the  home 
pulpit,  of  fear  lest  gifts  for  the  foreign  field  should 
rob  the  home  field.  No,  Mr.  Stanton  knew  full 
well  that  no  church  has  ever  thriven  through 
withholding,  and  that  no  pastor  ever  starved 
because  his  people  were  interested  in  foreign  mis- 
sions. Neither  was  he  afraid  of  offending  his 
people  by  his  zeal  for  the  foreign  work.  But 
the  results  were  small,  and  year  by  year  he  faced 
the  disappointment  of  failure,  rendered  the  more 
poignant  by  his  own  sense  of  responsibility. 

The  presence  of  a  furloughed  missionary 
speaker  in  his  midweek  meetings  was  by  no 
means  a  rare  event,  and  he  had  once  secured  the 
services  of  one  of   the  secretaries  of  the  Foreign 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


TEJ£        *>v 


Board,  for  a  Sunday  morning  address;  but  the 
young  pastor  was  always  embarrassed  by  his  own 
weakness  in  seconding  the  appeal.  And  now, 
as  the  time  for  another  annual  offering  came 
round,  he  was  feeling  so  distressed  over  the  pros- 
pect that  it  almost  made  him  ill.  He  determined 
to  devote  much  time  to  prayer  over  his  prepara- 
tion for  the  service  on  that  day,  and  after  a  long, 
hard  week  of  study  and  meditation,  on  Saturday 
evening  he  shut  himself  into  his  study  for  a  last 
earnest  seeking  of  God's  help  and  blessing.  He 
had  been  more  fatigued  than  he  knew,  and, 
while  he  prayed,  he  fell  asleep  and  dreamed. 

He  was  entering  the  church  for  the  morning 
service  of  Foreign  Mission  Sunday.  As  he  opened 
the  door  beside  the  pulpit,  he  was  conscious  of  an 
unusual  expression  on  the  faces  of  the  congrega- 
tion, which,  as  he  had  feared,  wTas  smaller  than 
usual.  The  cause  was  soon  apparent.  One  of 
the  side  seats  in  the  pulpit  was  already  occupied, 
and  by  a  stranger,  who  rose  to  meet  him  as  he 
ascended  the  steps.  Where  had  he  seen  that 
face  before?  It  was  one  which  would  be  notice- 
able among  ten  thousand,  not  for  any  striking 
beauty  of  feature,  but  for  such  a  combination  of 
strength  and  sweetness  as  is  rarely  seen  in  any  man, 
for,  with  the  best  of  man,  it  united  the  best  of 
woman,  without  even  faintly  suggesting  the  effemi- 
nate. His  manner,  modest,  unassuming,  yet  betok- 
ened no  feeling  that  he  had  not  a  right  to  be  there. 
He  extended  his  hand,  and  said  in  a  low  voice: 


10 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


"My  brother,  I  have  come  at  your  earnest 
invitation,  as  I  have  done  many  times  before. 
As  your  mind  and  those  of  this  people,  are  yet 
weak  to  discern  spiritual  realities,  I,  your  Lord 
and  Master,  have  come  this  once  in  bodily  form, 
that  henceforth  you  may  feel  more  confidently 
assured  of  my  continual  presence  in  your  worship." 

For  a  moment  the  minister  could  not  speak, 
but  simply  gazed  into  that  matchless  face,  con- 
vinced that  there  was  no  mistake,  yet  with  an 
unspeakable  joy  and  a  strong  fear  struggling  for 
the  mastery  in  his  heart.  Then,  with  almost  a 
sigh  of  relief,  he  said : 

"Lord,  it  is  indeed  thou;  and  my  heart  is  filled 
with  thanksgiving  for  this  blessed  privilege;  and 
now  thou  wilt  speak  to  my  people  to-day,  and  they 
will  heed  the  message  as  they  would  not  mine. 
The  service  is  thine;   conduct  it  as  thou  wilt." 

"I  will  indeed  speak  to  your  people  to-day,  my 
brother,  but  through  your  lips.  Speak  you  what 
you  believe  I  would  speak;  and  I  will  be  with 
your  mouth,  and  teach  you  what  you  should  say." 
There  was  no  use  in  arguing  against  those  quiet, 
decided,  yet  sympathetic  tones.  But  how  could 
the  minister  ever  lead  his  people  in  prayer,  or 
attempt  to  present  the  cause,  while  the  Lord 
himself  sat  beside  him  there  in  the  pulpit?  It 
was  impossible. 

The  organ  prelude  was  ended,  the  first  notes  of 
the  long  metre  doxology  were  struck;  mechan- 
ically Mr.  Stanton  joined  in  the  strains,  stumbled 


OVER  AGAINST  THE   TREASURY 


^D 


through  the  invocation,  and  made  such  work  of 
the  psalter  that  his  people  gazed  wonderingly  at 
him.  He  gave  out  the  hymn,  and  sat  down,  his 
head  throbbing  as  if  it  would  burst.  He  read 
the  Scripture  lesson,  without  knowing  what  he 
read,  and  said:  "Let  us  pray."  All  heads  were 
bowed,  and  the  people  waited.  The  minister 
tried  to  speak,  but  words  would  not  come.  At 
last,  in  anguish  of  spirit  and  with  tears  streaming 
down  his  cheeks,  he  turned  about  in  the  pulpit 
and  burst  forth: 

"Depart  from  me,  for  I  am  a  sinful  man,  O 
Lord.  I  have  been  unfaithful  to  thee,  unfaithful 
to  this  people,  and  I  am  not  worthy  to  stand  up 
before  them  to  proclaim  thy  word.  I  have  told 
them  of  the  almost  countless  thousands  of  thy 
sheep  who  are  wandering  in  the  darkness  of  sin 
and  of  ignorance,  and  have  urged  them  to  give 
up  their  substance  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which 
is  lost;  but  I  have  turned  my  own  back  on  the 
hand  that  was  outstretched  to  call  me  to  carry 
the  gospel  to  the  heathen,  when  there  was  nothing 
in  the  world  to  prevent  my  going,  and  I  have  chosen 
the  comparative  comfort  of  a  large  home  pastorate, 
and  the  chance  to  make  a  reputation.  O  Lord, 
forbid  that,  when  I  have  preached  to  others,  I 
myself  should  be  a  castaway,  unused  of  thee  be- 
cause I  would  not  let  thee  use  me  as  thou  wouldest! 
Forgive  my  sin,  make  me  what  thou  wouldest 
have  me  be,  and  send  me  where  thou  wouldest 
have    me    go.      And  oh,  have  mercy   upon  this 


12 


^V^ 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


people!  Let  them  not  suffer  for  my  sin,  but  give  to 
them  a  worthier  shepherd,  and  arouse  them  to 
earnest  prayer  and  intelligent  effort  for  the  speedy 
evangelization  of  this  world  of  thine.  For  thine 
own  name's  sake.     Amen." 

It  was  the  most  remarkable  prayer  ever  offered 
from  that  pulpit,  the  briefest  and  the  most  in- 
tensely earnest,  and  there  was  hardly  a  dry  eye 
in  the  house  when  it  was  concluded.  Mr.  Stan- 
ton's missionary  sermon  that  day  was  hardly  the 
one  which  he  had  so  laboriously  prepared.  His 
lips  had  been  opened,  and  in  very  truth  did  the 
Lord  teach  him  what  he  should  speak.  He 
first  told  his  people  more  fully  of  the  struggle 
through  which  he  had  passed  on  leaving  the  semi- 
nary, and  of  his  excusing  himself  from  going  out 
as  a  foreign  missionary. 

"And  now,"  said  he,  "I  can  never  rest  until  I 
have  found  out  whether  I  am  too  old  to  correct 
that  mistake.  If  not,  you  must  find  another 
pastor.  If  I  cannot  go,  I  shall  stay  with  you, 
but  I  shall  not  be  the  man  I  was  before  I  saw  my 
Lord.  My  people,  I  have  never  been  able  to  set 
before  you  your  responsibility  for  the  world,  as  I 
ought  to  have  done,  and  I  have  mourned  the  fact; 
but  now  I  can  say  all  that  is  in  my  heart;  and  in 
the  presence  of  the  Christ  of  Calvary,  I  plead  with 
you  for  those  for  whom  he  died,  and  for  whose 
salvation  he  has  commissioned  every  disciple  to 
go,  so  far  as  he  may  be  able,  unto  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth.     There   are  young  people  in 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


13 


1 


this  church  whom  the  love  of  Christ  might  well 
constrain  to  devote  their  lives  to  this  service. 
There  are  men  of  means  who  could  well  afford  the 
joy  of  supporting  a  substitute  on  the  foreign  field. 
And  there  is  not  one  of  us  who  will  not  be  the 
better  for  some  sacrifice  of  our  own  ease  and.  com- 
fort and  luxury  that  the  light  of  the  knowledge 
of  the  glory  of  God,  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ, 
may  shine  out  into  the  darkness. 

"We  have  been  but  playing  at  this  great  work, 
eagerly  investing  our  millions  in  every  form  of 
commercial  enterprise  for  selfish  gain,  while  we 
have  rather  grudgingly  dropped  the  pennies  and  the 
nickels,  and  a  few  dollars,  in  the  plate,  to  provide 
for  the  sending  of  the  gospel  to  millions  of  im- 
mortal souls.  Our  young  men  have  fought  and 
bled  for  their  country;  our  young  women  have 
hesitated  at  no  peril  in  their  devotion  as  nurses 
of  the  sick;  and  parents  have  not  held  back  the 
willing  offering.  But  the  recruiting  of  soldiers  of 
the  cross  is  a  slow  and  disheartening  task.  The 
country  gladly  poured  out  blood  and  treasures 
like  water  to  give  Cuba's  people  freedom  from 
temporal  oppression,  but  the  church  of  a  million 
and  a  quarter  members  has  called  it  'conscience- 
less begging'  when  called  upon  for  a  million 
dollars  and  a  few  hundred  young  people  to  save  a 
billion  heathen  from  the  crushing  slavery  of  sin. 

"O  my  people,  these  things  ought  not  so  to  be! 
We  cannot,  we  dare  not,  permit  them  to  continue 
so  to  be.     We  must  have  a  part  in  the  sacrifice 


14 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


of  those  who  have  suffered  and  died  in  mission 
lands,  by  at  least  giving  until  we  feel  it,  and  then, 
like  them,  giving  until  we  do  not  feel  it.  Here  in 
the  presence  of  our  Lord,  I  am  more  then  ever 
convinced  that  we,  his  church  and  his  ministers, 
have  been  grieving  him  beyond  expression  by 
making  a  plaything  of  this  greatest  business  in 
the  world,  while  we  make  a  business  of  the  things 
which  the  Lord  intended  should  be  but  playthings. 
Never  can  we  hope  for  the  outpouring  of  his 
blessing,  until  we  seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God 
and  his  righteousness,  bringing  all  the  tithes 
into  the  storehouse,  that  there  may  be  meat  in  his 
house.  He  looks  not  at  how  much  we  give,  but 
at  how  much  we  withhold.  Some  of  us  may  not 
have  come  prepared  to  respond  to  this  new  sense  of 
responsibility,  which  has  come  to  us  through  the 
realization  of  the  presence  of  the  Master  him- 
self; but  I  am  sure  that  he  will  take  our  pledges. 
He  is  testing  our  hearts  to-day,  not  our  purses. 
His  sacrifice  for  us  was  a  glad  one,  though  it 
meant  the  cross.  Let  us  follow  him  in  joyful 
offering." 

This  is  but  a  brief  outline  of  the  sermon,  which 
moved  that  congregation  as  it  had  never  been 
moved  before.  There  followed  an  indescribable 
scene.  Once  more  the  Lord  "sat  over  against 
the  treasury,"  as  the  people  cast  in  their  gifts. 
The  poor  widow  was  there  with  her  two  mites, 
and  the  Lord,  as  of  old,  smiled  upon  her  and 
blessed  her.     The  man  of  moderate  means  was 


fi, 


7i& 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


~*\ 


15 


there,  and  gave  till  he  felt  it;  and  the  rich  man 
was  there,  who  had  been  accustomed  to  "cast  in 
of  his  superfluity"  a  dollar  bill,  and  then  go  home 
and  joke  with  his  friends  about  how  much  of  his 
dollar  would  get  to  Africa.  But  it  was  not  a  dol- 
lar this  time.  A  dollar  for  missions  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Lord  of  life!  No;  he  would  be  ashamed 
to  give  it.  He  had  a  ten-dollar  bill  in  his  pocket; 
how  would  that  do?  He  smoked  that  much  in  a 
couple  of  weeks.  And  this  was  for  the  salvation 
of  millions,  for  a  year.  How  much  did  a  whole 
missionary  cost,  anyway?  What  would  his  wife 
say  if  they  should  have  one  of  their  own?  Afford 
it?  For  that  matter,  he  would  hardly  notice  it. 
And  there  was  that  strong,  sweet  face  looking 
into  his  face,  yes,  on  down  into  his  heart;  and  with 
a  new  joy,  which  embarrassed  him  by  its  strange- 
ness and  sweetness,  he  slipped  in  a  paper  pledg- 
ing himself  and  wife  to  the  support  of  a  new 
missionary. 

And  there  sat  Elder  Austin,  one  of  the  richest 
men  in  the  community,  regular  in  attendance  at 
church,  a  faithful  member  of  the  session,  but  not 
a  believer  in  foreign  missions.  Was  there  not 
far  more  that  the  church  could  do  at  home?  was 
his  argument;  surely  he  could  not  be  expected  to 
convert  other  nations  when  there  was  such  a 
need  of  the  gospel  in  America!  But,  somehow  or 
other,  the  suicidal  selfishness  of  such  a  programme 
struck  him  to-day  as  it  never  had  done  before. 
What   would   he,   and   what   would   America,   be 


if, 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


to-day,  if  that  plan  had  been  followed  from  the 
time  of  Christ?  Was  it  simply  for  America  that 
Christ  had  died?  Were  the  men  who  had  no 
interest  in  foreign  missions  the  most  enthusiastic 
in  the  home  work,  and  the  strongest  spiritual 
powers  in  the  local  church?  For  the  first  time  he 
saw  the  matter  as  his  Lord  saw  it,  when  he  stopped 
not  short  of  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  in 
his  great  commission  to  his  disciples. 

This  thought  brought  others  in  its  train.  If 
this  be  indeed  the  Lord's  plan  for  his  church, 
surely  the  minister  was  right  in  saying  that  he 
did  not  intend  that  the  church  should  play  with 
this  solemn  responsibility,  putting  its  millions 
into  commercial  enterprise  for  selfish  gain  and 
pleasure,  its  tens  of  thousands  into  the  provision 
of  luxurious  home  churches,  where  the  rich  might 
take  comfort  during  a  service  and  a  sermon, 
soothed  by  the  beautiful  architecture  of  the  build- 
ing, and  the  music  of  the  trained  choir,  and  con- 
gratulate themselves  that  they  were  not  as  other 
men;  and  putting  only  its  pennies  and  dimes 
and  a  few  dollars  into  this  vast  work  for  the  salva- 
tion of  a  world.  What  a  sublime  faith  it  must 
have  taken,  for  the  few  who  had  been  in  earnest 
about  it,  to  work  on,  year  after  year,  with  the 
church's  pittances,  while  her  rich  men  were  living 
for  themselves,  or  at  best  adding  to  the  magnifi- 
cent endowments  of  some  of  the  larger  col- 
leges or  libraries,  or  contributing  to  local  philan- 
thropies.    Why    should    not    the    Lord's    work 


St 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


have  some  of  the  millions?  Did  men  leave  any 
other  work  to  take  care  of  itself  because  it  was, 
forsooth,  a  "work  of  faith"?  It  was  at  best  the 
excuse  of  an  unpardonable  selfishness.  Over- 
whelmed with  a  sense  of  shame  for  himself,  and 
for  others  like  him,  he  rose  to  his  feet,  and  stam- 
mered out: 

"Lord,  have  mercy  upon  me,  a  sinner!  I  have 
given  some  portion  of  my  time,  my  strength,  my 
means,  to  the  work  of  this  church;  but  I  have  turned 
a  deaf  ear  to  the  call  of  the  need  of  heathen  millions 
for  whom  thou  hast  died.  And  the  church  which 
calls  itself  thine  has  been  playing  at  missions,  grudg- 
ingly sparing  a  handful  of  its  young  men  and  women, 
and  permitting  them  to  suffer  and  toil,  with  a 
meager  support,  while  it  rests  at  home  and  criti- 
cises and  orders  retrenchment.  We  have  let  the 
sons  of  the  poor  go  to  this  field  and  have  counted  our 
own  sons  too  good  for  this  sacrifice.  How  shall 
we  ever  lift  up  our  heads  before  thee  to  claim  thy 
blessing?  We  have  come  short  even  of  the  tithe 
of  the  income,  the  minimum  requirement  under 
the  law;  instead  of  realizing  the  larger  privileges 
and  responsibilities  which  are  ours  under  the 
reign  of  the  blessed  liberty  of  love!  Henceforth, 
O  Lord,  I  pledge  myself  that  I  will,  if  my  wealth 
continues  with  me,  at  least  never  give  less  for  thy 
work  than  I  spend  on  myself  and  my  family." 
And,  as  to  Zacchaeus  of  old,  Jesus  said  to  him: 
"To-day  I  must  abide  at  thy  house." 

A  son  of  the  elder  had  been  sitting  in  the  family 


is 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


pew,  amazed  beyond  measure  by  all  that  was 
going  on  around  him;  but  with  the  conviction 
growing  more  and  more  intense  that  it  meant  more 
for  himself  than  he  was  willing  to  acknowledge. 
Then  began  the  struggle  of  his  life.  Reared  in 
luxury,  of  both  natural  and  acquired  refinement,  in 
the  senior  class  of  Gale  University,  possessed  of  an 
original  mind  and  quick  perceptions,  which  had 
made  him  the  prize  debater  of  his  class,  he  had 
looked  forward  to  the  study  of  the  law  and  a  bril- 
liant career  at  the  bar,  of  which  friends,  classmates, 
and  professors  all  had  assured  him.  Could  it  be 
possible  that  he  was  mistaken  in  this  choice  of  a 
profession?  Was  it  indeed  true,  as  he  had  un- 
heedingly  heard,  that  the  majority  of  those  who 
went  as  missionaries  were  children  of  the  compara- 
tively poor,  while  those  who  had  the  means  to 
support  themselves,  without  cost  to  the  church, 
rarely  felt  themselves  called  to  turn  aside  from  the 
pursuit  of  wealth  to  take  up  this  self-denying  work  ? 
In  vain  he  tried  to  think  of  an  excuse  for  this; 
not  one  would  satisfy  his  conscience,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Master. 

"Why  should  you  not  go?"  the  question  came  to 
him.  "Would  you  regard  it  as  a  waste  of  your 
time  and  talents  to  follow  your  Master  in  this 
work  ?  WTho  gave  you  those  talents,  and  to  what 
purpose?" 

With  head  bowed  low,  he  fought  his  battle,  then 
faced  the  Master  in  the  joy  of  triumph,  crying: 

"  Lord,  what  wilt  thou  have  me  to  do  ?     Whether 


Smlg 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


it  be  China,  or  India,  or  Africa,  I  will  follow  thee 
whithersoever  thou  goest;  and  the  money  where- 
with thou  hast  blessed  me,  but  wherewith  I  was  in 
danger  of  cursing  myself,  shall  provide  for  the 
necessities  of  my  work." 

This  was  an  almost  heart-breaking  announce- 
ment to  his  father  and  mother;  but  they  dared  not, 
nor  would  they,  oppose  any  objection  to  this  logical 
application  of  the  new  spirit  of  the  elder  himself, 
who  simply  sighed  an  "Amen,"  as  the  Lord  ac- 
cepted the  volunteer. 

There  were  many  others  in  that  congregation 
who  formed  a  new  plan  of  life  that  day;  but  not 
all.  Some,  alas,  "went  away  sorrowful,"  for  they 
"had  great  possessions." 

The  minister  had  been  sitting  on  the  platform, 
speechless,  overwhelmed  by  what  was  going  on 
before  him.  Startled  by  a  sudden  sound,  he  turned 
his  head,  and  lo,  he  was  not  in  the  church,  but 
sitting  in  his  study  chair.  His  wife  stood  in  the 
doorway  saying: 

"John,  it  is  past  midnight;  are  you  not  coming 
to  bed?" 


c 


20 


OVER  AGAINST   THE  TREASURY 


CHAPTER  II 

THOROUGHLY  awakened  by  his  wife's  call, 
bringing  to  him  a  realization  of  the  strange- 
ness of  the  dream  which  had  come  to  him  as 
he  sat  in  his  study  that  night  before  Foreign  Mission 
Sunday,  John  Stanton  hastily  threw  off  his  clothes 
and  went  to  bed,  but  not  to  sleep.  There  was  no 
need  for  further  preparation  of  a  sermon,  since  his 
mind  and  heart  were  full  to  overflowing  with  that 
new,  strange,  solemn  yet  glad,  sense  of  the  real, 
personal  presence  of  the  Master,  and  with  the  assur- 
ance that  he  had  received  his  message  to  his  peo- 
ple ;  but  the  vast  outreach  of  the  new  thoughts,  the 
infinite  possibilities  of  the  new  principle  of  action, 
if  made  operative  in  his  church,  the  logical  future 
for  himself, — these  things  surged  and  resurged 
through  his  mind,  giving  place  gradually  to  a 
joyful  and  quieting  assurance  that  now,  as  never 
before,  he  was  in  a  position  to  make  the  best  use 
of  his  ministry,  wheresoever  the  Lord  might  lead 
him.  And  so  he  drifted  into  a  dreamless  slumber, 
from  which  he  awoke  to  a  gloriously  bright  day 
in  what  seemed  a  veritable  new  world,  God's 
world,  in  a  sense  which  he  had  heretofore  but 
dimly  comprehended. 

It  was  not  that  this  minister  had  previously  had 
no  conception  of  the  presence  of  Jesus  Christ  in 
the  world,  or  of  his  own  personal  relation  to  him. 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


21 


He  had  not  failed  to  tell  his  people  that  their  fol- 
lowing of  Jesus  Christ  must  be  a  very  real  thing, 
that  it  involved  self-denial  and  sacrifice,  that  the 
cross  must  be  borne  if  the  crown  was  to  be  won  and 
worn;  that  Christ  has  promised  to  be  with  his 
disciples  always,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world; 
yet  it  was  evident  to  him  now  that,  even  to  himself, 
it  had  only  been  an  ideal,  with  very  little  about  it 
of  tangible  reality.  His  thought  of  the  spiritual 
character  of  that  presence,  instead  of  meaning  to 
him  the  vast  enlargement  of  the  sphere  of  Christ's 
influence,  had  deprived  it  of  its  definiteness  and 
of  the  greater  part  of  the  powrer  which  it  should 
have  had  in  his  thought  and  life.  He  had  prayed 
at  every  service  during  his  ministry  for  the  presence 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  wisdom  and  power,  and  would 
have  borne  testimony  that  his  prayer  had  many 
times  been  answered;  he  knew  that  what  he  had 
prayed  for  was  the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ;  yet 
when,  in  his  dream,  his  Master  had  visibly  appeared 
in  the  pulpit  with  him,  it  had  been  strangely  dis- 
concerting; had  upset  all  his  plans,  had  given  him 
new  views  of  life;  and  he  was  very  sure  that  the 
effect  of  such  an  occurrence  upon  his  people  would 
be  much  as  he  had  seen  it  in  his  dream. 

What  did  it  all  mean?  Were  Christian  people 
in  general  leading  such  lives  as  they  wrould  not  live 
if  the  Christ  were  visibly  present  at  their  side? 
Were  they  deciding  questions  of  vital  importance 
in  a  way  in  which  they  would  not  dare,  and  could 
not  even  wish,  to  decide  them  if  Jesus  were  living 


OVER  AGAINST  THE  TREASUR 


with  them  as  an  inseparable  companion?  Could 
it  be  true  that  Christians  were  putting  far  less  into 
the  treasury  of  the  Lord  than  they  would  offer — 
not  simply  from  fear,  not  merely  from  a  sense  of 
shame,  but  also  from  a  truer,  purer  motive — if  they 
should  see  Christ  sitting  over  against  the  treasury  ? 
It  was  unquestionably  true;  but  it  was  equally 
unquestionable  that  it  could  not  possibly  be  the 
will  of  God  that  this  should  so  be  and  continue 
to  be. 

So  far  as  he,  John  Stanton,  was  concerned,  it 
could  never  be  so  again.  But  could  he  make  his 
people  see  that  which  he  had  come  to  see  himself  ? 
That  was  the  question  with  him  as  he  went  about 
his  preparations  for  the  morning  service,  surpris- 
ing his  wife  by  an  unwonted  quietness,  yet  intensity 
of  manner.  More  than  once  did  she  involuntarily 
raise  her  head  to  glance  at  him  as  they  knelt  to- 
gether for  morning  prayer.  What  had  come  over 
this  husband  of  hers  in  a  single  night  ?  The  morn- 
ing hours  were  too  full  for  him  to  attempt  to  tell 
her  before  the  service  of  all  that  had  come  to  him; 
but  his  prayer  was  more  simple,  more  direct,  more 
tenderly  eloquent,  than  any  that  she  had  ever  heard 
him  offer,  and  she  awaited  with  more  than  the 
usual  interest  the  service  in  the  church. 

More  than  one  of  the  members  of  the  West- 
minster Presbyterian  Church  took  a  second  look 
into  their  pastor's  face  that  morning  as  he  passed 
from  his  room  in  the  church  into  the  pulpit  and 
took  his  seat.     For  a  time  his  head  was  bowed  in 


J 


OVER  AGAINST  THE   TREASURY 


*m 


23 


his  hands   in  one   final   fervent   appeal   that   the 

presence  of  the  Master  might  be  as  real  a  thing  to 

him  as  it  had  been  in  the  visions  of  the  night; 

then  he  proceeded  with  the  service.     His  people 

had  always  thought  Mr.  Stanton  a  fine  reader  and 

eloquent   in  prayer.     He   had  taken   much  pains 

with  all  his  pulpit  work  and  had  given  no  little 

study  to   oratorical   effect.     To-day,   however,    it 

was  not  the  arts  of  the  elocutionist,  nor  the  easy, 

graceful  flow  of  well-rounded  periods,  that  took 

hold  of  the  people  as  they  had  never  been  taken 

hold  of  before.     Consciously  in  the  presence  of 

the  Lord  himself,  he  drew  his  people  into  that 

presence,  into  the  very  Holy  of  holies,  and  there 

they  abode  throughout  the  service,  seeing  what 

their  pastor  had  seen,  hearing  what  he  had  heard, 

and  growing  more  and  more  ready  to  do  what  he 

had  in  vision  seen  them  do. 

There  was  but  one  text  possible  for  John  Stanton 

that  morning: 

"And  he  sat  down  over  against  the  treasury,  and 
beheld  how  the  multitude  cast  money  into  the  treasury." 

The  greater  part  of  the  sermon  consisted  of  the 
simple,  earnest  narration  of  the  dream,  omitting, 
of  course,  any  mention  of  the  names  of  members 
of  the  congregation  who  had  figured  in  the  vision. 
As  he  described  the  scene  it  seemed  to  his  audience 
as  if  they  too  could  see  the  strong,  sweet  face  of 
the  Lord  and  Master  of  them  all,  looking  into  their 
faces,  and  on  down  into  their  hearts,  with  such  an 
expression  of  love  and  longing  as  they  had  never 


^- 


^ 


^r  — 

OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


before  seen.  They  saw  the  millions  of  heathen- 
dom standing  and  calling  by  their  great,  unmet 
need,  "Come  over  and  help  us!"  They  saw  their 
own  hearts,  with  all  their  selfishness.  They  saw 
the  stupidity  and  futility  of  their  proposal  to  meet 
that  need  with  a  handful  of  dollars  and  a  few 
half-hearted  prayers.  And  they  heard  the  Master 
say,  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not  unto  one  of  these 
least,  ye  did  it  not  unto  me."  Yet,  as  Mr.  Stanton 
pictured  the  Saviour  sitting  by  the  treasury,  he 
scrupulously  avoided  urging  his  people  to  give 
from  fear  of  the  one  who  sat  there:  every  offering 
must  be  from  love  of  him,  and  from  a  moving, 
constraining  desire  to  please  him  who  had  pleased 
not  himself,  but  had  made  his  life  a  willing  sacri- 
fice that  all  men  of  every  race  might  be  saved. 

He  closed  with  the  words:  "It  was  the  intention 
to  have  made  our  offering  for  the  great  work  of 
foreign  missions  this  morning.  Although  I  have 
not  had  opportunity  to  consult  with  the  other 
members  of  the  session,  I  shall  venture  to  ask 
you  to  postpone  the  offering  until  this  evening.  I 
make  this  request  for  two  reasons:  first,  I  do  not 
wish  one  cent  of  our  offering  to  be  chargeable  to 
impulse,  nor  to  have  one  of  you  feel  by  evening 
that  you  were  moved  by  the  narration  of  a  vision 
to  give  more  than  you  would  have  given  in  a  soberer 
moment.  Moreover,  it  is  quite  possible  that 
some  of  you  have  not  come  prepared  to  give  all 
that  you  now  feel  you  ought  and  wish  to  give. 
If  you  have  seen  the  Lord  Christ  face  to  face  this 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


25 


morning,  as  I  have,  you  will  be  here  this  evening, 
and  will  make  your  offerings  with  a  realizing 
sense  that  he  does  indeed  sit  over  against  the 
treasury,  ready  to  bless  you  as  you  give  your  gifts 
to  him,  not  to  a  board  or  a  cause,  or  even  to  the 
church  or  the  unevangelized  millions,  but  to  him 
who  loved  us  and  washed  us  from  our  sins  in  his 
own  blood.  Therefore,  let  us  first  give  our  own 
selves  unto  the  Lord. 

"Our  ever  blessed  Saviour  and  Master,  we 
thank  thee  for  the  revelation  of  thyself  which  thou 
hast  given  us  this  day.  May  it  mean  unmeasured 
blessing  in  all  the  days  that  are  to  come.  May  thy 
living,  loving,  quickening,  constraining  presence 
be  a  more  real  thing  in  our  lives  henceforth. 
Infinite  spirit  as  thou  art,  forbid  that  we  should 
regard  thee  as  only  a  spirit,  and,  as  such,  not 
merely  without  flesh  and  blood,  but  without 
definite  contact  with  the  life  of  to-day.  As  infi- 
nite spirit,  take  thou  such  complete  possession 
of  our  spirits  that  henceforth  for  us  to  live  shall  be 
Christ,  that  we  may  think  thy  thoughts  and  speak 
thy  words  and  do  thy  deeds,  multiplying  by  as 
many  fold  as  we  are  more  than  one  in  number, 
the  beneficent,  life-giving  influences  which  were 
present  and  potent  in  thy  blessed  person  when 
thou  wast  visibly  dwelling  in  this  world.  May  we 
bear  the  burden  of  sorrow  thou  didst  bear  for  a 
world  lying  in  wickedness.  May  we  yearn,  as 
thou  didst  yearn,  to  seek  and  to  save  that  which  is 
lost,  of  every  race  and  tongue.     Forbid  that  any 


26 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


one  of  us  should  do  less  for  foreign  missions 
than  thou  wouldest  do  wert  thou  in  the  place  of 
that  one.  Bring  before  us  the  vision  of  the  world's 
great  need;  make  to  ring  in  our  ears  the  great 
commission;  impress  upon  us  the  full  meaning 
of  thy  cross  and  thy  promise;  until  our  hearts  are 
moved  with  the  compassion  which  moved  thy 
heart,  and  we  are  filled  with  the  courage  which 
filled  thy  breast,  and  become  eager  to  offer  thee 
our  possessions  and  our  lives  for  such  use  as  thou 
wilt  make  of  them.  In  thine  own  name,  and  for 
thine  own  glory  we  ask  it.     Amen." 

As  the  congregation  joined  in  singing  the  old 
familiar  "Missionary  Hymn,"  for  the  first  time 
in  their  lives  many  of  the  members  of  that  church 
realized  the  full  personal  application  of  the  third 
stanza,  the  most  frequently  omitted  of  all  the 
hymn: 

"Can  we,  whose  souls  are  lighted 

With  wisdom  from  on  high, 
Can  we  to  men  benighted 

The  lamp  of  life  deny  ? 
Salvation!     O  salvation! 

The  joyous  sound  proclaim, 
Till  each  remotest  nation 

Has  learned  Messiah's  name." 

The  impression  made  by  the  service  had  been 
too  solemn  to  admit  of  the  usual  social  conversa- 
tion about  the  church  doors  and  on  the  way  home. 
The  talking  would  come  later;  but  there  was  a 
vast  amount  of  thinking  to  be  done  first. 

To  some  members  of  the  session  the  postpone- 


-/T  >c* 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


27 


ment  of  the  offering  until  the  evening  service  had 
seemed  at  first  of  very  questionable  expediency, 
for,  as  in  most  churches,  this  service  was,  as  a 
rule,  much  more  lightly  attended  than  that  of  the 
morning;  but  the  more  they  thought  of  the  effect 
produced  upon  themselves  by  their  pastor's 
words,  the  more  convinced  they  became  that  the 
attendance  that  evening  would  not  be  light,  nor 
the  offering  the  less  for  its  postponement. 

And  they  were  right.  There  were  a  few  who 
would  not  go.  They  had  been  talking  all  the 
afternoon  about  the  childishness  of  dreams,  and 
their  utter  inappropriateness  in  the  pulpit.  More- 
over, it  was  irreverent  to  try  to  bring  Christ  down 
again  in  this  fashion.  It  seemed  like  materialism, 
and  might  even  incline  toward  fetichism  and 
idolatry.  Christ  was  a  divine  and  spiritual  being, 
and  should  be  worshiped  and  served  spiritually, 
and  not  as  a  being  of  flesh  and  blood.  Some  of 
them  even  suspected  their  pastor  of  Unitarian 
tendencies  in  his  emphasis  on  the  human  nature 
of  Christ.  And  as  to  the  heathen,  were  they  not 
responsible  for  their  own  condition?  The  only 
good  Chinaman  was  a  dead  Chinaman,  and  to 
attempt  to  take  the  gospel  to  China  was  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  casting  pearls  before  swine. 
Had  they  not  just  recently  turned  again  and  rent 
those  who  had  gone  to  them  with  the  gospel? 
If  the  Lord  wanted  them  in  his  kingdom,  surely  he 
was  able  to  bring  them  there  without  the  waste  of  the 
lives  and  the  hard-earned  money  of  Christian  people! 


28  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


Among  those  who  remained  away  were  two  of 
the  wealthy  men  of  the  church,  who  did  not  dare 
to  go.  They  were  outwardly  correct  in  their  man- 
ner of  life  and  regular  in  attendance  at  church; 
but  they  had  gone  away  from  the  morning  service 
sorrowful,  because  they  "had  great  possessions." 

But  almost  everyone  who  had  been  present  in 
the  morning  returned  in  the  evening,  and  with 
them  so  many  of  their  relatives  and  neighbors 
that  chairs  had  to  be  brought  in  from  the  lecture 
room  to  seat  the  company  that  gathered. 

After  a  brief  service  of  praise  and  the  reading 
of  Scripture,  Mr.  Stanton  offered  this  simple 
prayer: 

"  O  Thou  who  in  the  days  of  thy  visible  presence 
in  the  world  didst  sit  over  against  the  treasury 
in  the  temple,  to  observe  the  manner  of  the  love 
which  those  who  delighted  to  call  themselves  the 
people  of  God  bare  to  him;  we  have  gathered  here 
to-night  for  none  other  purpose  than  to  prove  our 
love  for  thee  by  the  gifts  which  we  are  about  to 
cast  into  thy  treasury.  We  are  not  going  to  give 
to  thee  grudgingly  or  of  necessity,  for  that  is  not 
the  way  in  which  thou  hast  given  to  us.  We  are 
not  going  to  give  because  we  see  thee  sitting  over 
against  the  treasury  and  fear  thy  wrath  if  our 
gifts  are  small.  Nay,  Lord,  our  most  earnest 
desire  to-night  is  that  we  may  see  thee  sitting  there, 
may  be  assured  that  the  gifts  of  our  love  are 
acceptable  in  thy  sight,  and  may  go  forth  from  this 
place  with  a  new  joy  in  the  knowledge  that  we  are 


.— m 

OF£i?  4G,4/iV.Sr   THE   TREASURY  29 


continuing  and  increasing  that  work  for  which 
thou  didst  come  into  the  world,  and  into  which 
thou  didst  send  forth  thy  disciples.  Let  there  be 
no  self-deception  among  us,  preventing  an  abso- 
lute surrender  and  full  consecration.  Let  there 
be  no  thought  of  what  our  friends  or  our  neighbors 
are  doing,  or  of  what  they  may  think  of  what  we 
are  doing.  May  we  forget  everyone  but  thyself; 
and  be  thou  the  most  real  presence  here.  May 
our  bringing  of  the  tithes  into  the  storehouse,  that 
there  may  be  meat  in  thine  house,  open  for  us  the 
windows  of  heaven  that  thou  mayest  pour  us  out 
such  a  blessing  that  there  shall  not  be  room  enough 
to  receive  it.     We  take  thee  at  thy  word.     Amen:" 

There  was  no  sermon.  For  the  sake  of  those 
who  might  not  have  been  present  in  the  morning, 
Mr.  Stanton  made  a  brief  statement  of  the  purpose 
of  the  service,  and  that  which  had  led  to  the  post- 
ponement of  the  offering.     Then  he  said: 

"Each  one  who  wishes  to  make  an  offering  may 
do  so  with  the  utmost  privacy  by  using  one  of  the 
envelopes  which  have  been  placed  in  the  pews; 
but,  as  all  will  wish  to  give  something,  there  can  be 
no  harm,  and  there  may  be  some  advantage,  in 
dispensing  with  the  baskets,  and  having  each  one 
come  in  turn  to  the  chest  which  has  been  placed 
before  the  pulpit,  to  deposit  his  offering.  If  the 
experiences  of  any  during  this  day  have  been  of 
such  a  character  as  might  prove  helpful  to  others, 
an  opportunity  will  be  afforded  them  to  relate  these 
experiences  when  making  their  offerings.     And  if 


30  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


any  are  disposed  to  offer  their  lives  for  the  Lord's 
work,  let  that  fact  also  be  written  on  paper,  to  be 
dropped  in  the  treasury.  But  let  us  all  know  of  it 
for  our  inspiration. 

"  As  it  is  fitting  that  I,  your  pastor,  be  an  example 
to  the  church,  permit  me  to  make  my  offering  first. 
It  is  twofold.  As  I  have  already  intimated,  acting 
under  a  conviction  which  I  cannot  escape,  I  am 
offering  my  life  for  foreign  mission  service,  to  go 
into  that  work  unless  the  board  considers  me  too 
old,  or  otherwise  disqualified  for  the  service.  You 
will  have  no  serious  difficulty  in  securing  another 
pastor,  while  the  board  is  unable  to  secure  half 
the  men  it  needs,  and  the  fields  are  white  to  the 
harvest.  But  while  this  matter  is  pending,  I 
cannot  go  on  living  in  the  delightful  manse  you  have 
provided  for  us,  with  all  the  comforts  and  many  of 
the  luxuries  of  life,  and  giving  as  little  as  I  have 
given  for  the  salvation  of  those  who  are  in  heathen 
darkness.  So  long  as  we  remain  here,  my  wife 
and  I  purpose  to  make  ourselves  responsible  for 
the  salaries  of  two  native  helpers,  and  for  the 
support  of  a  native  boy  and  girl  in  Christian  schools. 
To  these  latter  objects  our  children  will  also  con- 
tribute as  they  may  be  able. 

"Now  let  us  for  the  time  being  dismiss  the 
thoughts  which  may  arise  in  connection  with  my 
proposal  to  leave  this  church,  which  has  grown  so 
dear  to  me,  and  proceed  with  our  offerings.  Will 
the  elders  of  the  church  first  make  their  offerings?  " 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


31 


CHAPTER  III 

ABSOLUTE  stillness,  and  a  seriousness  which 
/-\  profoundly  impressed  even  the  curious  sight- 
seer, reigned  throughout  the  church  for  a 
moment  after  the  pastor  had  ceased  speaking  and 
remained  standing  at  the  desk.  Then  there  arose 
from  one  of  the  front  pews  and  moved  forward  to 
the  treasury  the  oldest  member  of  the  session, 
Elder  Stanhope,  his  white  head  a  crown  of  glory, 
and  his  voice  still  strong  and  clear  in  spite  of  his 
nearly  fourscore  years,  as  he  spoke  with  measured 
words  and  evidently  intense  feeling: 

"Fellow-Christians,  as  it  was  proper  for  our 
pastor,  as  the  chief  overseer  of  the  flock,  to  set  us 
all  an  example  in  the  declaration  of  his  renewed 
and  enlarged  purposes  of  consecration  to  the  serv- 
ice of  our  blessed  Master,  so  it  is  proper  that  I, 
the  oldest  of  the  under-shepherds,  should  be  the 
next  to  declare  how  profoundly  I  have  been  moved 
by  the  events  and  the  thoughts  of  this  day.  I 
could,  with  great  personal  satisfaction,  fervently 
repeat  the  'Nunc  Dimittis,'  and  go  to  my  eternal 
rest  in  peace,  having  in  deed  and  truth  seen  this 
day  the  Lord  Christ,  were  it  not  for  the  feeling, 
which  has  pressed  upon  me  with  overwhelming 
force  to-day,  that  I  have  been  an  unprofitable 
servant,  an  unfaithful  steward;  and  that  I  must 
beg  the  permission  of  my  merciful  Master  to  remain 


? 


32 


sr 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


here  in  this  world  a  little  while  longer, — instead  of 
departing  to  be  with  Christ,  which  is  far  better, — 
in  order  that  I  may  have  opportunity  to  set  right, 
in  some  small  measure,  the  wrongs  of  my  steward- 
ship. If  I  live  in  the  possession  of  my  intellectual 
powers  until  to-morrow  night,  the  members  of  my 
family  who  may  survive  me  will  be  the  poorer  by 
that  portion  of  my  goodly  estate  which  should  have 
been  in  the  hands  of  the  Lord  for  his  own  work 
long  ago;  but  they  will  be  the  richer  by  the  memory 
of  an  old  man  a  hundredfold  happier  than  he  has 
ever  been  in  his  long  life  before,  because  he  will 
have  paid  his  honest  debts,  instead  of  transferring 
his  estate  to  others  to  avoid  the  payment. 

"It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  proclaim  here  the 
amount  for  which  I  am  placing  pledges  in  the 
treasury:  it  is  enough  to  say  that,  if  our  pastor 
leaves  us  to  go  to  the  foreign  field,  the  income  of 
my  offering  will  be  sufficient  to  maintain  him  there 
as  one  of  the  foreign  pastors  of  this  church.  I  say 
'one,'  for  I  believe  that  under  the  impulse  of  the 
vision  which  we  have  seen  to-day  almost  as  vividly 
as  our  pastor,  we  shall  be  able  to  support  representa- 
tives in  more  than  one  field,  at  home  and  abroad. 

"There  is  one  thing  that  troubles  me,  for  it  is 
a  wrong  that  I  have  no  power  to  set  right.  My 
children  are  all  grown.  Of  not  one  of  them  am  I 
ashamed;  but  not  one  of  them  is  in  the  ministry  of 
the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ;  not  one  has  given  his 
life  to  missionary  service;  and  now  they  are  all 
past  age.     May  God  forgive  me  that  I  never  urged 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


them  to  consider  that  service,  because  I  too  lightly- 
esteemed  it,  and  because  I  feared  the  sacrifice  for 
them  and  possible  partings  for  myself.  But  I  have 
grandchildren,  and  I  feel  to-night  that  no  greater 
joy  could  come  to  me  than  the  decision  of  some  of 
them  to  heed  the  call  of  the  world's  greatest  need. 
I  have  never  been  opposed  to  foreign  missions;  I 
have  believed  in  the  work,  spoken  for  it,  and  sup- 
ported it — in  that  absurdly  inadequate  way  in 
which  the  church  has  been  so  generally  sustaining 
it;  but  I  cannot  face  this  treasury,  and  see  my  Lord 
in  very  deed  sitting  beside  it,  and  continue  to  con- 
tribute the  insignificant  fraction  of  the  reserve  of 
my  income  which  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  con- 
tributing. O  friends,  it  is  good  to  come  out  into 
the  larger  light  before  the  mind  loses  its  sensitive- 
ness to  that  light.     I  bless  God  for  this  day!" 

So  deep  was  the  agitation  of  the  venerable  and 
beloved  elder  as  he  spoke  these  words  and  dropped 
his  pledge  into  the  treasury  that  tears  sprang  un- 
bidden to  many  eyes. 

Then  rose  Elder  Preston,  a  man  of  sixty,  wiry, 
nervous, — fussy,  some  called  him, — and  inclined 
to  be  close.  He  was  by  no  means  so  well-to-do  as 
Elder  Stanhope,  nor  was  he  so  well-beloved.  He 
also  walked  forward  to  the  treasury,  hesitated, 
swaying  from  one  foot  to  the  other,  and  finally 
burst  out: 

"Brethren, — if  you  will  let  me  call  you  by  that 
name, — there  isn't  a  meaner  man  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  than  I  feel  myself  to  be  to-night.     Here 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


I 


I  am,  an  elder  in  the  Presbyterian  Church,  a  fairly 
successful  business  man,  able  to  live  in  comfort, 
though  not  what  one  would  call  wealthy  in  these 
days;  yet  I  am  compelled  to  say  to  you  here  to- 
night that  I  have  only  given  about  two  dollars  per 
year  to  the  biggest  work  the  church  has  to  do,  the 
work  of  making  Jesus  Christ  known  to  millions 
of  heathen.  I  have  just  waked  up  to  the  realiza- 
tion that  it  would  take  about  a  million  years  to  do 
it,  if  everyone  gave  at  that  rate;  and  that  mean- 
while I  am  doing  just  about  my  level  best  to  keep 
Christ  out  of  his  kingdom. 

"But  to  tell  the  truth,  I  never  before  saw  Christ 
passing  the  collection  plate  on  Foreign  Mission 
Sunday.  I  never  thought  of  him  taking  up  my 
two-dollar  bill,  and  looking  at  it  and  then  at  me, 
as  if  he  wanted  to  set  me  to  thinking  where  I  had 
put  the  other  four  thousand  nine  hundred  and 
ninety-eight  dollars  he  had  given  me  that  year. 
I  just  freed  my  conscience  of  the  heathen  for  an- 
other year;  and  when  the  monthly  concerts  came 
around,  if  I  was  present,  I  just  settled  back  in  my 
seat  in  the  comfortable  assurance  that  I  had  paid 
in  advance  for  that  year,  and  the  appeals  for  help 
did  not  mean  me.  I  would  have  been  ashamed  to 
give  nothing;  but  that  peace  of  conscience  was  the 
cheapest  thing  I  ever  bought, — and  the  dearest. 
It  was  not  even  worth  what  it  cost,  for  it  was  like 
spending  two  dollars  a  year  to  buy  leanness  for  my 
own  soul.  I  always  skipped  the  kind  of  missionary 
articles  that  get  on  the  nerves  of  a  stingy  man,  the 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASUR 


pathetic  appeals  for  men  and  money;  but  kind  of 
enjoyed  the  sort  that  tell  about  the  customs  of  the 
people,  and  give  the  statistics  of  converts  from 
heathenism,  for  those  made  my  miserable  little 
two  dollars  seem  to  swell  to  about  two  hundred 
dollars;  and  I  felt  as  if  some  of  those  converts  were 
really  mine.  But  I  tell  you,  brethren  and  sisters, 
that  two  dollars  didn't  look  much  like  two  hundred 
dollars  this  morning;  it  looked  a  great  deal  more 
like  the  'thirty  cents'  we  sometimes  hear  about  on 
the  street. 

"lam  getting  pretty  well  along  in  years  now,  and 
I  can't  make  up  for  the  years  that  are  gone;  but 
I  am  going  to  do  something  in  that  direction,  and 
the  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  may  count  on  me 
for  one  thousand  dollars  a  year  as  long  as  I  am 
prospered  as  I  am  now;  and  perhaps  we  can  fix 
it  so  that  the  subscription  may  go  on  after  I  am 
dead.  As  you  know,  I  am  just  a  plain,  blunt  man, 
and  not  much  of  a  speech-maker;  but  I  want  you 
to  know  that  this  is  both  the  saddest  and  the  hap- 
piest day  of  my  life." 

And  with  the  first  tears  in  his  eyes  that  anyone 
present  had  ever  seen  there,  he  slipped  in  his  pledge 
and  took  his  seat. 

In  order  of  seniority,  it  had  now  come  to  the  elder 
who  had  figured  in  John  Stanton's  vision  the  night 
before;  and  the  pastor  wondered  whether  that 
vision  was  to  be  fulfilled.  He  had  delicately  handled 
this  portion  of  his  vision  in  narrating  it,  fearing, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  deprive  his  people  of  any  good 


36 


OVER  AGAINST  THE   TREASURY 


influence  of  a  message  which  seemed  so  truly  from 
God,  and  dreading,  on  the  other  hand,  either  to 
overinfluence  or  to  offend  the  elder  in  question. 
He  had  not  long  to  wait,  for  Elder  Austin  arose  and 
came  forward,  saying: 

"Friends,  destinies  are  in  the  making  here  to- 
night, and  among  them  my  own.  However  deli- 
cately our  pastor  tried  to  conceal  the  fact  this 
morning,  I  presume  it  was  as  clear  to  you  as  it  was 
to  me  that  I  was  the  elder  whom  he  saw  in  his 
vision,  for  I  believe  it  was  a  God-given  vision, 
rather  than  any  dream  in  the  ordinary  sense.  I 
have  been  a  regular  attendant  at  church,  and  en- 
deavored to  be  a  faithful  member  of  the  session; 
but  I  have  never  believed  in  foreign  missions.  It 
would  be  a  very  difficult  matter  to  tell  why;  but 
I  think  the  chief  reason  must  have  been  that  my 
religion  has  been  more  a  thing  of  the  head  than  the 
heart;  my  knowledge  of  Jesus  Christ  has  been  one 
of  study  and  not  one  of  personal  contact;  and  I 
have  never  come  into  such  sympathetic  touch  with 
him  as  to  be  able  to  see  things  from  his  point  of 
view.  If  anyone  had  asked  me  if  I  thought  the 
heathen  were  to  have  any  share  in  the  salvation 
wrought  out  by  Jesus  Christ,  I  should  probably 
have  said :  'Yes,  I  suppose  that  Christ  died  for  them 
also,  and  some  day  they  will  be  reached  by  the 
gospel;  but  now  is  the  day  of  opportunity  and 
responsibility  in  our  own  great  land,  where  there 
are  millions  of  practical  heathen,  toward  whom  we 
have  a  patriotic  as  well  as  a  religious  obligation. 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


Ie 


Their  number  is  being  increased  every  year  by 
immigration  and  birth,  and  the  church  is  not  be- 
ginning to  keep  pace  with  this  great  work.  Let 
the  children  first  be  fed  before  the  bread  is  thrown 
to  the  dogs.  All  the  religious  forces  of  the  country 
combined  are  not  sufficient  to  make  a  thoroughly 
Christian  land  of  this;  so  why  should  we  trouble 
ourselves  about  the  other  side  of  the  world?  Not 
only  charity,  but  also  evangelization,  should  begin 
at  home.'  So  I  argued  with  myself,  and  with  many 
another  who  has  asked  my  opinion,  and  never  till 
this  morning  did  I  realize,  as  our  pastor  said,  'the 
suicidal  selfishness  of  such  a  programme.' 

"For  the  first  time  I  have  to-day  thanked  God 
that  he  would  not  permit  the  early  disciples  to  sink 
into  the  rut  of  any  such  theory,  that  he  used  per- 
secution and  miracle  and  supernatural  vision  and 
dream  to  lead  or  compel  them  to  go  out,  and  send 
out,  to  other  lands,  while  as  yet  the  work  in  their 
own  land  was  only  in  its  infancy.  Had  he  not  done 
so,  there  is  no  manner  of  possibility  that  you  and  I 
should  now  be  enjoying  the  liberties  and  blessings 
of  a  Christian  land,  or  the  possession  of  Christian 
truth  for  this  life  and  hope  for  the  life  to  come. 
Moreover,  I  looked  about  me,  and  saw  that  what 
makes  the  men  of  power  in  the  church  is  not  the 
'smug  provincialism'  which  sees  only  America  and 
her  people,  and  seeks  only  her  prosperity,  and  which 
logically  would  confine  itself  to  its  own  village,  its 
own  family,  its  own  exaggerated  self;  but  the 
world-wide  sympathy  and  effort. 


38  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


"Who  are  the  men  and  women  whom  you  and  I 
really  most  revere  and  love  in  this  church?  Are 
they  those  who  are  doing  nothing  for  foreign  mis- 
sions? We  all  know  that  they  are  not.  I  have  no 
doubt  at  all  that  I  should  have  proved  twice  as 
useful  a  church  member  and  elder,  and  have  given 
three  times  what  I  have  to  home  missions,  if  I  had 
not  narrowed  my  heart  down  to  the  smaller  con- 
ception of  Christ's  commission  to  his  church. 
With  Christ  sitting  over  against  the  treasury,  the 
work  of  my  conversion  did  not  take  very  long;  but 
my  thinking  could  not  stop  there.  Although  it  is 
the  Sabbath,  I  think  God  will  forgive  me  for  having 
spent  a  good  part  of  the  day  over  figures.  WTien 
this  church  was  built,  I  gladly  put  twenty  thousand 
dollars  into  it,  that  our  little  company  of  the  elect 
might  have  a  beautiful  and  comfortable  church 
home,  and  that  the  small  section  of  the  city  for 
which  we  are  chiefly  responsible  might  be  attracted 
here  rather  than  to  other  churches.  When  Calvin 
University  needed  a  new  gymnasium  and  swimming 
tank,  I  gave  them  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  it, 
that  the  boys  of  my  alma  mater  might  show  up 
well  in  intercollegiate  sports;  and,  as  you  know,  I 
built  a  library  for  the  town  at  a  cost  of  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  At  the  same  time  I  was  investing 
certain  other  thousands  in  the  factories  and  rail- 
roads in  which  I  am  interested;  and  have  had  in 
each  case  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  I  was 
either  helping  my  fellow-men,  or  contributing  to 
my    own    material    welfare.     Meanwhile    I    have 


i 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


39 


J 


given  one  hundred  dollars  per  year  to  home  mis- 
sions, as  much  more  to  local  charities,  and  not  one 
cent  to  foreign  missions.  And  there  is  many  an- 
other who  is  doing  just  this  sort  of  thing,  and 
letting  his  humanitarian  efforts,  the  architecture  of 
beautiful  buildings,  and  the  music  of  expensive 
choirs,  lull  his  soul  into  a  self-congratulation  and 
satisfaction  for  which  there  is  no  warrant  in  the 
word  of  God.  These  things  ought  I  to  have  done, 
but  not  have  left  the  other  undone. 

"And  let  me  tell  you,  my  friends,  that  those 
things  which  we  have  left  undone  must  be  done  on 
the  same  business  principles,  the  same  generous 
scale,  on  which  these  things  which  we  have  done 
are  regularly  done,  or  we  shall  never  overtake  the 
work  which  has  been  given  us  to  do.  I  was  reading 
this  afternoon  of  a  mission  station  in  China,  where 
there  are  fifteen  missionaries,  including  wives,  at 
work  for  two  million  people;  and  the  total  sum 
given  them  for  the  maintenance  of  two  churches, 
two  hospitals,  two  dispensaries,  a  boys'  boarding 
school  of  seventy  pupils,  a  kindergarten,  a  theologi- 
cal seminary,  evangelistic  itineration  and  station 
work  for  men  and  women,  five  day  schools  for 
children,  ten  country  chapels,  and  the  salaries  of 
preachers,  colporteurs,  Bible-women  and  teachers 
to  the  number  of  thirty,  is  three  thousand  five  hun- 
dred dollars!  One  school  alone  would  require  sev- 
eral times  that  amount  here  at  home.  Of  course, 
labor  of  all  kinds  is  cheaper  and  living  is  lower;  but, 
friends,  do  we  think  for  a  moment  that  the  world 


c 

(a 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


"^^ 


is  going  to  be  evangelized  by  expenditure  on  that 
scale?  Single  men  give  their  ten  to  thirty  millions 
for  single  home  enterprises,  while  all  that  more 
than  a  million  and  a  quarter  of  Presbyterians  can 
scrape  together  for  the  evangelization  of  hundreds 
of  millions  who  sit  in  darkness  and  the  shadow  of 
death  is  an  average  of  one  dollar  apiece! 

"I  tell  you,  friends,  I  was  educated  for  business 
almost  from  my  first  lisp,  and  it  does  not  take  two 
minutes  of  a  business  man's  time  to  see,  without 
the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  that  we  are  not  administer- 
ing the  kingdom  of  God  on  business  principles.  Is 
it  possible  that  we  are  saying  to  ourselves,  'Not  by 
might,  nor  by  power,  but  by  my  Spirit,  saith  Je- 
hovah,' so  we  need  not  bring  business  principles  to 
bear  upon  this  work?  If  so,  may  God  forgive  the 
wickedness  of  our  selfish  withholding,  and  the 
greater  wickedness  of  our  untrue  and  unholy 
excuse!  Was  there  ever  a  business  which  so  in- 
sistently demanded  the  application  of  business 
principles  as  'the  King's  business'?  Was  there 
ever  a  steward  who  dared  to  say  to  his  monarch,  as 
an  excuse  for  the  slack  performance  of  his  duty, 
'O  King,  thou  art  all  powerful:  thy  servant  did  not 
think  it  necessary  to  do  anything'?  But  that  is 
just  what  I  have  been  saying  to  my  King,  and  the 
wonder  is  that  he  has  used  me  at  all  in  spite  of  it. 

"I  have  come  to  a  very  definite  conclusion, 
friends,  and  that  is  that  I,  for  one,  am  going  to  do 
business  with  and  for  my  Lord,  on  the  same  prin- 
ciples, the  same  scale,  which  have  made  me  what 


"Eg 


OVER  AGAINST    THE   TREASURY 


41 


n 


you  call  a  prosperous  man.  From  this  time  forth, 
I  propose  to  give  to  the  work  of  foreign  missions 
annually,  at  least  as  much  as  I  spend  on  the  living 
of  myself  and  family;  and,  that  I  may  do  at  least 
a  little  toward  righting  the  uneven  balance  of  the 
past,  I  propose  at  once  to  endow  that  theological 
seminary  in  China,  to  which  I  have  referred,  to 
the  extent  of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars.  This 
is  all  I  am  in  a  position  to  do  now;  but,  if  my  life 
is  spared,  this  is  not  the  end.  It  is  but  poor 
atonement  for  the  selfish,  narrow,  foolish  past. 
Why  should  not  the  Lord's  work  have  some  of  the 
millions?  Why  should  these  millions  all  be  spent 
on  the  things  which,  directly  or  indirectly,  minister 
to  ourselves  and  our  nearest  neighbors,  while  the 
Board  of  Foreign  Missions  reports  a  deficit  of  one 
hundred  and  seventy  thousand  dollars,  and  the 
church  talks  retrenchment  ?  The  church  shall  not 
retrench  this  year,  if  I  have  to  sell  at  a  sacrifice 
and  make  good  the  whole  deficit  myself!" 

His  best  friends  could  hardly  recognize  Elder 
Austin,  as,  contrary  to  all  precedent,  he  poured 
forth  this  torrent  of  eloquent  self-denunciation, 
resolution  and  appeal,  while  the  perspiration 
streamed  from  his  brow  in  the  intensity  of  his 
feeling.  A  revolution  had  been  truly  wrought  in 
the  man  in  the  course  of  a  single  day. 

It  was  now  the  turn  of  Elder  Went  worth;  and  a 
man  of  fifty,  tall,  slender,  dressed  neatly,  but  in 
clothing  which  had  evidently  seen  the  wear  of 
many  seasons,  arose;    a  quiet,  unassuming  man, 


42  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


yet  one  of  the  strongest  spiritual  factors  in  the 
church,  and  one  to  whom  both  pastor  and  people 
turned  for  all  manner  of  sympathy  and  sugges- 
tion. Little  had  he  of  silver  or  gold  to  give,  but 
such  as  he  had  he  gave  with  a  liberality  and  an 
evident  pleasure  which  had  always  made  it  seem 
far  more  than  it  really  was.  A  believer  in  Chris- 
tian missions  of  every  kind  he  had  always  been; 
and  out  of  his  meager  income  he  had  always  found 
something  annually  for  every  board  of  the  church. 
Indeed,  it  was  believed  that  it  was  his  generous 
interest  in  everyone  else  which  had  kept  him  poor. 
Sickness  in  his  family  and  unfortunate  invest- 
ments had  contributed  their  share,  and  he  was 
really  one  of  the  poorest  men  in  the  church. 

Happy  as  the  day  is  long,  his  face  fairly  beamed 
with  delight  as  he  now  stepped  to  the  front  and 
faced  the  congregation,  saying: 

"Well,  friends,  I  knew  that  there  was  a  good 
day  coming  for  our  beloved  church.  Sometimes 
it  used  to  seem  as  if  we  were  dead  set  against 
getting  the  best  out  of  life  by  our  insisting  on  getting 
the  most  out  of  it,  and  were  just  paying  down 
enough,  as  we  thought,  to  hold  on  to  reserved 
seats  in  heaven,  while  we  ate,  drank  and  were 
merry  here.  The  Lord  never  let  me  be  tempted, 
as  he  has  some  of  you,  with  much  of  this  world's 
goods;  perhaps  because  he  knew  he  could  not 
trust  me  with  more  than  a  small  share;  but  I 
doubt  if  any  of  the  wealthy  men  in  this  church 
have  gotten  more  satisfying  pleasure  out  of  their 


"TE8 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


43 


much  than  I  have  out  of  my  little.  I  have  never 
envied  one  of  them  before  now;  but  the  strange 
thing  about  my  joy  to-night  is  that,  for  the  first 
time  in  my  life,  I  have  a  feeling  of  envy  toward 
my  brethren.  I  never  felt  any  inclination  to 
envy  them  the  money  they  spent  on  themselves 
or  their  families,  or  the  money  they  laid  up,  or 
even  the  money  they  have  given  for  colleges  and 
libraries.  But  to-night  I  just  do  envy  them  their 
power  to  put  their  hands  into  their  pockets  and 
take  out  a  missionary  for  Korea,  a  theological 
seminary  for  China,  a  doctor  for  Africa  and  a 
college  for  India,  and  feel  that  when  that  thrill  is 
past  they  can  afford  another  one  by  doing  it  again. 
uO  brethren,  that  is  a  kind  of  pleasure,  a  kind 
of  luxury,  that  I  can  never  expect  to  enjoy;  but 
in  spite  of  that  unavoidable  heart-hunger  at  the 
very  thought  of  being  able  to  do  such  things, 
I  am  just  about  bursting  with  joy  at  the  knowl- 
edge that  they  are  to  be  done,  and  that  my  old 
friends  and  colleagues  are  going  to  have  the  joy 
of  doing  them.  And  I  am  not  going  to  be  left  out 
entirely.  My  wife  and  I  have  been  talking  the 
matter  over  this  afternoon,  and  we  believe  that 
we  can  both  pull  through  another  winter  without 
the  new  clothing  for  which  we  have  been  saving 
lately;  and  we  are  going  to  treat  ourselves  to  a 
scholarship  in  that  theological  seminary,  if  one  of 
them  happens  to  be  left  unprovided  for  by  the 
generosity  of  Brother  Austin.  This  is  to  be  over 
and  above  any  little  gifts  we  have  been  in  the  habit 


44  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


of  making  to  foreign  missions,  and  it  is  just  to 
celebrate  the  coming  of  the  good  times  to  the  church 
in  Jaconsett  in  answer  to  many  hopes  and  prayers. 
Our  Master  has  certainly  visited  us  in  person. 
May  it  be  to  remain  with  us  as  evidently  real  as  he 
seemed  this  morning! " 

With  another  of  his  radiant  smiles,  which  always 
awoke  a  general  response,  this  well-loved  elder 
resumed  his  seat. 

Elder  Ogden  promptly  took  his  place.  A  com- 
paratively young  man,  about  forty  years  of  age, 
very  successful  in  his  practice  as  a  lawyer,  he  and 
his  wife  were  leading  spirits  in  the  social  life  of  the 
church,  and  also  in  the  Sabbath  school,  where  each 
conducted  a  large  class.  As  they  were  general 
favorites,  their  influence  was  large,  and  it  had  been 
a  source  of  much  grief  to  the  pastor  that  these 
young  people,  whom  he  found  so  congenial  in 
almost  every  way,  did  not  appear  to  be  deeply 
spiritually  minded,  and  in  particular  were  without 
interest  in  other  than  the  local  work  of  the  church, 
their  regard  for  which  seemed  to  be  somewhat 
that  of  a  man  for  his  club.  Yet  so  clean  was 
Lawyer  Ogden's  record,  and  so  great  was  the  popu- 
larity both  of  himself  and  his  wife  with  the  young 
people  of  the  church,  that  Mr.  Stanton  had  not 
felt  justified  in  opposing  the  suggestion  of  his 
election  as  an  elder,  though  he  rather  trembled 
for  the  Ark  of  God  when  committed  to  his  care. 

Though  Elder  Ogden  maintained  his  usual 
command  of  himself  this  evening,  yet  it  was  evi- 


tL 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


Z3 


dent  to  all,  before  he  began  speaking,  that  some- 
thing new  and  strange  had  come  into  his  life  that 
day. 

"Friends,"  he  began,  "lawyers  are  supposed  to 
know  how  to  talk,  at  any  time  and  on  any  side  of 
a  subject,  and  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  congrat- 
ulating myself  on  the  possession  of,  perhaps,  an 
unusual  degree  of  readiness  in  the  use  of  the 
English  language.  I  must  confess  that  it  has 
forsaken  me  to-night,  and  that  I  would  much 
rather  keep  my  mouth  entirely  closed.  It  makes  a 
big  difference  in  the  fluency  of  a  man's  speech 
whether  he  is  looking  to  his  own  honor  or  to  his 
own  shame;  and  the  latter  is  all  that  I  am  likely 
to  achieve  to-night,  for,  like  some  who  have  pre- 
ceded me,  I  have  a  confession  to  make.  But  my 
confession  is  a  sadder  one  than  theirs,  for  I  have 
been,  in  plain  words,  a  renegade,  a  turncoat,  and 
that  in  the  matter  of  the  use  of  a  whole  life.  I 
would  have  given  anything  to  escape  being  made 
an  elder  in  this  church,  because  I  knew  that  I  was 
not  worthy.  Yet,  as  it  would  almost  surely  help 
me  in  the  practice  of  my  profession  to  hold  that 
position,  and  as  I  could  not  refuse  it  without 
offending  good  friends  in  the  church,  I  accepted 
the  election,  and  have  tried  to  make  as  good  an 
elder  as  a  man  with  an  unrepented  heart-wrong 
could  make.  You  have  been  kindly  indulgent, 
because  you  saw  the  effort  and  did  not  know  the 
whole  story. 

"I  have  for  eighteen  years  been  unfaithful  to  a 


46  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


vow.  I  was  among  the  earliest  of  the  regular 
student  volunteers,  having  formed  the  decision  in 
my  sophomore  year  at  college.  I  was  an  active, 
earnest  Christian  at  that  time,  and  a  summer 
spent  in  Bible  study  at  Mt.  Hermon  had  con- 
vinced me  that,  so  great  was  the  disproportion 
between  the  forces  sent  to  the  foreign  field  and 
those  retained  at  home,  the  burden  was  on  every 
man  who  was  free  and  able  to  go  as  a  missionary 
to  prove  why  he  should  not  do  so.  There  was  no 
romance  about  this  for  me,  no  excitement;  but 
the  calm,  deliberate  conviction  that,  as  I  was  both 
free  and  able  to  go,  and  as  there  was  a  desperate 
need,  I  must  and  would  go,  unless  the  providence 
of  God  stepped  very  clearly  in  the  way.  To  this 
conviction  I  adhered  firmly  to  the  end  of  my 
senior  year,  deriving  neither  great  elation  nor 
great  depression  from  my  volunteer  decision,  but 
doing  what  I  could  to  secure  other  decisions  from 
fellow-students,  and  succeeding  in  a  number  of 
cases  because  the  cold  logic  of  the  situation  "was 
irresistible  when  constantly  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  minds  of  thinking  men  in  student  intercourse. 
"I  planned  to  enter  the  theological  seminary 
that  autumn.  For  a  good,  thorough  rest,  I  took  a 
summer,  roughing  it  in  the  Adirondacks,  with 
two  or  three  classmates  and  some  good  friends 
from  the  previous  class,  who  had  taken  their  first 
years  of  professional  studies  and  were  eager  for 
a  good  holiday.  We  did  not  propose  anything 
violent,  even  in  the  way  of  exercise,  but  just  to 


r 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


enjoy  nature  and  one  another.  We  spent  our 
evenings  about  a  big  camp  fire,  and  discussed 
many  things,  past,  present  and  future,  realistic 
and  idealistic,  no  doubt  talking  some  wisdom  and  a 
great  deal  of  foolishness.  I  had  taken  good  rank  in 
debate  while  in  college,  and,  I  suppose,  must  have 
become  a  sort  of  leader  in  these  discussions  in 
the  woods,  for  the  fellows  applauded  me  more 
vigorously  than  they  did  anyone  else.  At  last 
one  night  a  fellow  who  had  been  attending  a  New 
York  law  school  cried  out : 

'"That's  a  master  argument,  Ned,  my  boy; 
and  I  don't  believe  there's  a  man  in  our  class  at 
Columbia  who  could  come  anywhere  near  it  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment.  You  were  cut  out  for  a 
lawyer,  and  no  mistake.  Don't  be  so  preposter- 
ously idiotic  as  to  hide  that  talent  of  yours  in  a 
missionary  napkin  out  in  the  wilds  of  Africa. 
There  are  hosts  of  poor  pettifoggers  in  the  law; 
but  there's  lots  of  room  at  the  top,  and  that's 
where  you'll  get  without  half  trying.  It  is  true 
that  it  takes  logic  and  eloquence  to  make  a  suc- 
cessful minister;  and  I  suppose  even  the  cannibals 
would  rather  listen  to  an  orator  than  to  a  tomb- 
stone; but  there  are  varieties  of  logic  and  elo- 
quence, and  if  I  ever  saw  a  born  lawyer,  you 
are  one.' 

"At  first  I  simply  pooh-poohed  at  the  fulsome 
flattery  and  the  effort  to  switch  me  off;  but  that 
fellow  kept  at  me  most  persistently;  and  one 
night    there    walked    into    our    camp    Professor 


. 


48  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


Bailey  of  Columbia  Law  School,  one  of  Maxon's 
teachers,  whom,  as  I  learned  afterwards,  Maxon 
had,  since  our  first  talk,  coaxed  to  come  over  from 
another  part  of  the  woods  for  my  especial  benefit. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  flattery  and  cajolery  and  bril- 
liantly painted  impressionistic  visions  of  my  rich 
and  honored  future  proved  too  much  for  the  de- 
cision, which  had  ever  been  rather  of  my  intellect 
than  of  my  heart,  and  I  entered  Columbia  Law 
School  in  the  fall,  instead  of  entering  Auburn 
Theological  Seminary. 

"Most  of  the  results  you  know.  A  moderate 
measure  of  riches  and  honor  has  already  come  to 
me.  With  no  so-called  'bad  habits,'  I  have  yet 
lived  a  gay  society  life,  really  more  to  drown  the 
frequently  troublesome  voice  of  conscience  than 
from  any  great  love  for  worldly  things.  In  spite 
of  this  uneasiness,  I  have  never  deeply  regretted 
my  change  of  mind,  from  the  first  year  in  law 
school,  when  I  resolutely  stifled  one  or  two  fierce 
protests  of  conscience,  until  to-day.  But  to-day, 
in  the  presence  of  the  Lord  sitting  by  the  treasury, 
I  have  seen  my  life  in  a  new  light,  and  loathed 
myself  as  one  who  has  deliberately  turned  from  a 
life  of  unselfish  devotion  to  God  and  my  fellow- 
men  to  a  life  of  selfish  devotion  to  his  own  earthly 
advantage  and  material  enjoyment.  I  know  that 
our  pastor  has  mourned  over  my  lack  of  spiritu- 
ality, and  has  feared  for  the  influence  of  my 
worldliness  on  the  young  people  of  the  church; 
but  I  do  not  suppose  that  he  has  ever  suspected 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


49 


that  it  was  all  due  to  heart-unrest,  the  result  of 
the  deliberate  breaking  of  a  right  and  wise  promise 
made  to  my  God  and  Saviour.  I  had  yielded  to 
the  constraint  of  ambition  and  resisted  the  con- 
straint of  the  love  of  Christ.  The  mistake  which 
our  pastor  has  acknowledged  is  similar,  yet  not 
the  same.  It  may  be  that  personal  ambition 
entered  into  his  decision  to  remain  at  home,  but 
it  did  not  fill  his  whole  heart,  as  it  did  mine. 
It  was  a  choice  with  him  of  two  fields  of  work  for 
Christ,  while  with  me  the  choice  was  between 
Christ  and  self." 

"Don't  say  that,  Brother  Ogden!"  cried  out 
Mr.  Stanton.  "My  choice  was  as  really  and 
fully  a  choice  of  self  as  was  yours,  for  Christ,  my 
own  personal  Christ,  was  leading  to  the  foreign 
field,  and  I  would  not  follow." 

"Well,  my  dear  pastor,  however  that  may  be, 
you  find  room  for  repentance,  while  I  fear  I  shall 
not.  If  there  is  any  field  where  you  want  a  mis- 
sionary lawyer,  here  am  I,  Lord,  send  me;  or  if 
there  is  any  place  where  you  want  a  self-sup- 
porting, converted  lawyer  as  a  preacher,  here  am 
I,  Lord,  send  me.  If  I  am  not  wanted  out  there, 
the  best  atonement  I  can  make  is  to  see  to  it 
that  all  the  money  that  I  make,  over  and  above 
moderate  living  expenses,  goes  to  the  work  of 
saving  men,  and  that  my  personal  influence  tells 
in  the  same  direction.  Do  not  misunderstand  me, 
and  draw  the  inference  that  I  believe  no  man  is 
called  of  God  to  be  a  lawyer,  or  can  largely  glorify 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


God  in  that  profession.  Far  from  it;  but  I  be- 
lieve that  my  calling  to  the  law  was  strictly  human, 
and  that  many  another  lawyer  ought  to  have  been 
in  the  ministry. 

"This  has  been  a  long  speech,  friends;  but  it 
had  to  be  made.  May  God  forgive  me  my  broken 
vow!  I  pray  you  to  forgive  me  my  cumbering  of 
the  ground  as  elder,  and  my  worldly  example." 

So  saying,  he  dropped  his  pledge  into  the  treasury 
and  took  his  seat. 


NO  one  looked  at  clock  or  watch;  it  was  evi- 
dent that  all  waited  for  further  manifes- 
tations of  the  presence  and  power  of  the 
living  Christ.  To  the  surprise  of  everyone,  the 
next  person  to  rise  was  the  pastor's  wife.  Not 
often  had  her  voice  been  heard  in  general  meet- 
ings. Quiet,  unassuming,  she  had  been,  never- 
theless, a  power  in  the  congregation. 

"My  husband,"  she  said,  "has  taken  to  himself 
all  the  blame  for  changed  plans  in  our  life;  but  I 
want  to  tell  you  that  I  think  he  would  have  been  in 
China  to-day  had  it  not  been  for  me.  My  father 
and  mother  believed  in  foreign  missions,  just  as  a 
great  many  others  do — for  other  people  than  their 
own  sons  and  daughters.  They  both  contributed 
to  missions  and  kept  themselves 'informed  on  the 
subject;  but  my  first  suggestion  of  going  myself 
as  a  missionary  was  met  with  amazement,  almost 
amounting  to  indignation,  and  with  stern  refusal 
to  listen  to  such  a  proposition.  My  father  said: 
"  'Why,  my  dear  daughter,  you  are  not  fitted  for 
that  sort  of  life;  that  is  for  those  who  are  endowed 
with  unusual  powers  of  endurance,  and  especially 
for  those  who  have  not  such  home  ties  as  you  have. 
We  could  never  be  easy  about  you  for  a  moment, 
and  it  would  shorten  our  lives  by  many  years  if 
you  should  go  to  China.     We  can  never  give  our 


52  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


consent  to  your  marriage  with  John  Stanton  if  it 
involves  such  a  separation.  He  may  be  meant  for 
a  missionary,  though  we  think  he  is  really  more 
needed  here;  but  you  certainly  were  not  meant  for 
a  missionary's  wife.' 

".In  vain  I  pleaded  that  the  wife's  home  should 
be  where  her  husband  felt  called  to  go;  that  I  had 
scarcely  had  a  sick  day  in  my  life;  that  my  par- 
ents were  in  no  real  sense  dependent  on  me,  having 
several  other  children  equally  ready  and  able  to 
care  for  them;  that  I  was  freer  than  nine  out  of  ten 
to  go  and  quite  as  able  to  endure  hardness  as  nine 
out.  of  ten  on  the  field.  My  parents'  minds  were 
set  like  a  flint  against  the  idea;  and  I  could  not 
move  them.  When  it  came  to  my  decision,  I 
simply  could  not  bear  to  go  against  their  will  in 
this  matter,  so  I  persuaded  my  affianced  husband 
to  accept  the  call  offered  him  in  this  country,  as 
Providence  seemed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  our 
going  to  China. 

"My  father,  a  noble  Christian  man  in  other 
respects,  is  still  living,  and  will,  I  presume,  still  be 
bitterly  opposed  to  our  going;  but  as  I  see  the 
matter  to-day,  I  am  very  certain  that,  when  it  is 
simply  a  question  of  sentiment  with  parents,  and 
not  one  of  actual  dependence,  the  duty  to  Jesus 
Christ  should  stand  first.  It  seems  to  me  that 
otherwise  one  is  simply  loving  father  and  mother 
more  than  Jesus  Christ,  and  is  so  far  unworthy  to 
be  called  his  disciple.  I  know  there  are  many  who 
do  not  like  to  hear  that  doctrine  preached;    but 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY  53 


what  did  Jesus  mean,  if  he  did  not  mean  that? 
I  have  many  times  heard  people  try  to  answer  that 
question;   I  have  tried  all  these  years  to  answer  it 
myself;  and  the  answers  have  all  been  unsatisfying. 
I  have  loved  father  and  mother  more  than  him,  and 
have  not  been  worthy  of  him.     And  does  it  not 
strike   you   as   queer   that    Christian   fathers   and 
mothers  are  willing  to  have  their  sons  and  daughters 
go  to  distant  lands  for  diplomatic  careers,  or  to 
make  fortunes,  or  even  to  marry  some  foreigner  of 
rank  or  family,  while  they  see  absolutely  insur- 
mountable obstacles  in  the  way  of  their  becoming 
foreign    ambassadors    for    Christ?     Excuse    me, 
friends,  if  I  get  warmed  up  on  this  subject,  or  seem 
to  speak  disrespectfully  of  my  dear  parents;   but  I 
have  been  debating  it  so  unhappily  for  years,  con- 
victed  but   not   converted,    that   now,    when   the 
conversion  has  swept  through  me  like  a  flood,  I 
can  see  all  the  inconsistencies  of  the  old  position, 
and  shall  pray  for  power  to  convince  my  father 
that  I  do  not  love  him  less  because  I  love  my 
Saviour  more.     I  am  ready  to  go  with  my  husband 
wherever  and  whenever  the  Lord  may  call  him. 
It  would  be  a  joy  to  remain  here  with  you,  who  have 
become  a  part  of  our  lives;  but  it  will  also  be  a  joy 
to  take  the  gospel  to  those  who  sit  in  darkness." 
She  resumed  her  seat,  and  the  pastor  spoke: 
"  These  words  from  Mrs.   Stanton's  heart  will 
have  their  own  power  with  you,  I  am  sure;    but, 
in  her  desire  to  be  honorable,  she  has  taken  too 
much  blame  to  herself.     Had  I  not  been  wavering 


54 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


in  my  own  mind  over  the  question  of  staying  at 
home,  I  should  have  done  far  more  than  I  ever 
attempted  to  do  to  persuade  her  to  go,  knowing  well 
that  her  parents  were  not,  in  any  real  sense,  de- 
pendent on  her.  I  was  all  too  ready  to  accept  her 
parents'  opposition  as  a  providential  hindrance. 

"We  have  already  passed  the  usual  hour  for 
closing  our  service,  friends;  but  I  can  see  that  you 
do  not  wish  to  stop  here.  Let  us  take  a  little  time 
longer  to  hear  what  the  Lord  has  been  saying  to  our 
hearts  to-day;  and  then,  if  there  is  still  more  to  be 
said,  as  I  imagine  there  will  be,  we  can  adjourn 
until  Wednesday  evening.  Have  any  of  our  dea- 
cons a  message  for  us?" 

The  portly  form  of  Deacon  Ransom  rose  from 
the  middle  of  the  house  and  came  forward. 

"I  believe,"  he  said,  "the  office  of  deacon  was 
originally  the  serving  of  tables,  that  other  people 
might  eat,  and  run  to  their  preaching  or  their 
teaching;  and  I've  been  wondering  to-day  if 
the  deacons  hadn't  gotten  so  absorbed  in  the 
business  of  table-waiting  that  they  have  given  up 
the  work  of  teaching  and  preaching  for  good  and 
all,  and  have  forgotten  the  records  about  Stephen 
and  Philip,  who  seemed  to  be  so  full  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  that  they  had  to  serve  a  dish  of  gospel  with 
every  sandwich,  and  put  in  all  their  time  between 
meals  doing  the  evangelistic  jobs  that  the  apostles 
didn't  get  around  to.  Just  think  of  the  work  that 
Deacon  Philip  did  up  there  in  Samaria — foreign 
missionary  work  before  the  church  had  learned  that 


m 


s 


VJ 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


foreign  missions  was  its  business!  Just  as  like 
as  not  the  apostles  would  have  felt  a  bit  uncertain 
about  the  wisdom  of  casting  their  pearls  before  those 
despised  Samaritans,  in  spite  of  all  the  Lord  has 
said  about  their  giving  points  to  the  Jews;  but 
Deacon  Philip,  he  hadn't  any  finicky  notions. 
Got  driven  out  of  Jerusalem  by  persecution,  and 
had  to  flee  to  Samaria,  where  they  hadn't  any  need 
for  deacons  just  then,  not  having  reached  the  table- 
serving  stage.  But  they  needed  the  gospel  about 
as  bad  as  anyone  could,  and  there  were  no  apostles 
round  to  give  it  to  them;  and  he  felt  that  if  the 
deacons  didn't  turn  foreign  missionaries,  there  was 
a  great  lot  of  those  poor,  ignorant  people  who  were 
going  to  die  in  their  sins.  It  didn't  seem  much  in 
his  line  at  first;  but  there  was  a  big  hole  there,  and 
he  had  the  stuff  to  fill  it ;  so  he  simply  dropped  the 
tables  and  the  widows  and  the  orphans  that  he 
couldn't  serve  just  then,  and  went  to  serving  the 
souls  that  he  could.  And  he  proved  such  a  mighty 
good  soul-server  that  when  the  Holy  Spirit  wanted 
a  special  commissioner  to  get  the  gospel  planted  in 
Africa,  he  just  called  Philip  aside  and  made  him 
an  apostle  to  that  influential  Ethiopian  eunuch. 
I  tell  you,  my  friends,  I'm  not  another  Philip,  but 
I'm  magnifying  my  office  since  I  saw  my  Lord 
this  morning.  I'm  too  old  to  be  sent  as  a  mis- 
sionary to  Africa  or  China,  or  any  other  foreign 
land;  but  I'm  not  going  to  let  myself  be  so  taken 
up  with  looking  after  the  temporalities  of  the  church 
here  in  Jaconsett  that  I  can't    carry  the  gospel 


55 


A 


56  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


myself  to  all  within  reach,  or  send  others  to  carry 
it  to  those  out  of  my  reach.  I'm  not  a  rich 
man,  but  I'm  going  to  support  at  least  a  single 
apostle  to  the  heathen  as  long  as  God  gives  me 
the  means." 

The  rough  and  ready  speech  of  the  good  deacon 
was  a  bit  of  a  relief  to  the  intensity  of  what  had 
preceded,  while  indicating  an  equally  common- 
sense  application  of  the  day's  thought. 

The  pastor  was  meditating  an  adjournment  to 
Wednesday  evening,  when  an  evidently  very  much 
agitated  young  man,  the  son  of  Elder  Austin,  arose 
and  came  forward. 

"My  pastor  and  friends,"  he  said,  "perhaps  it 
is  not  my  turn  to  speak  yet,  for  there  are  older 
deacons  and  men  older  than  I  to  be  heard;  but  I 
feel  that  I  must  free  my  mind  of  a  very  great  bur- 
den before  this  meeting  closes.  My  father  saw  at 
once  his  portrait  in  the  story  of  our  pastor's  vision. 
Strange  to  say,  I  had  not  seen  mine  at  all  until  my 
father  spoke  this  evening.  But  it  was  there  as 
plain  as  day,  and  it  was  not  the  work  of  our  pastor, 
but  of  the  Spirit  of  God;  that  I  verily  believe.  I 
was  interested  this  morning,  but  the  vision  did 
not  take  a  very  strong  hold  upon  me,  chiefly,  per- 
haps, for  the  reason  that  I  have  grown  up  to  despise 
everything  of  the  nature  of  superstition,  and  have 
not  believed  that,  in  our  day,  one  hundred  dreams 
of  the  night  are  worth  one  hour's  wide-awake  medi- 
tation of  the  day.  I  came  here  to-night  expecting 
to  hear  some  of  the  more  emotional  or  nervous 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


57 


people  narrate  other  visions,  or  make  some  extrava- 
gant resolutions  which  would  not  be  kept  for  a 
month;  and  really  anticipated  more  amusement 
than  anything  else  from  the  meeting.  And  this 
in  spite  of  the  profound  respect  which  I  feel  for 
our  sincere  and  most  useful  pastor. 

"But  the  awakening  has  come.  As  one  after 
another  of  our  honored  elders,  our  pastor's  wife 
and  Deacon  Ransom,  have  spoken  with  the  earnest- 
ness of  deep  conviction,  of  the  mistakes  of  the  past 
and  the  new  resolves  for  the  future,  at  once  put  into 
execution,  the  feeling  has  grown  stronger  and 
stronger  within  me  that  I  have  been  facing  life  in 
an  altogether  wrong  spirit.  I  have  called  myself 
a  Christian ;  but  Christ  has  occupied  by  no  means 
the  first  place  in  my  life.  If  I  could  do  something 
for  him  without  taking  too  much  time  from  things 
more  important  (as  I  unwittingly  accounted  them), 
or  more  agreeable,  without  sacrificing  too  much  of 
the  culture  and  position  which  have  been  my  aim, 
I  have  done  it,  and  taken  credit  to  myself  for  every- 
thing of  the  kind,  as  if  it  were  conferring  a  favor  on 
my  Lord.  How  hollow  it  all  seems  now!  What 
a  travesty  on  a  profession  of  religion!  If  I  had 
died  to-day,  it  is  possible  that  I  might  have  been 
saved  in  the  goodness  and  mercy  of  God;  but  it 
would  have  been  'so  as  through  fire,'  and  I  should 
have  gone  empty-handed  to  the  presence  of  him 
who  gave  himself  for  me.  It  is  amazing  how  in- 
tensely, absolutely  selfish  a  man  can  be,  and  remain 
totally  ignorant  of  it,  considering  himself  filled  with 


58  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


noble  ambitions  and  devoted  to  the  reformation  of 
the  world.  Many  of  you  know  to  what  I  have 
been  looking  forward, — to  the  same  kind  of  career 
as  that  in  which  Elder  Ogden  has  made  so  distin- 
guished, yet  apparently  so  unsatisfying  a  success, — 
backed  up  by  the  same  sort  of  nattering  friends 
that  backed  him  up.  I  was  going  to  add  one  more 
to  the  long  list  of  lawyers,  when  the  world  would 
get  along  quite  as  well  if  the  present  number  were 
reduced  by  three  fourths,  as  I  have  been  told  by 
men  prominent  in  the  profession.  Not  that  the 
law  is  not  a  good  profession:  a  thoroughly  good 
Christian  lawyer  may  do  a  great  deal  of  good;  but 
there  is  a  fierce  competition  among  them,  and  a 
consequent  temptation  to  gradually  drop  out  the 
'thoroughly'  and  the  'good,'  if  not  also  the  'Chris- 
tian,' in  the  race  for  the  prizes  of  the  profession,  or 
even  for  a  self-supporting  practice. 

"Another  thing  that  has  struck  me  to-day  is 
that  thought  which  I  have  pondered  over  and  over. 
Is  it  indeed  true  that  the  large  majority  of  those  who 
go  as  missionaries  are  the  children  of  the  compara- 
tively poor;  while  those  who  have  been  brought 
up  in  comfort,  and  have  now  the  means  of  support- 
ing themselves  independently  of  their  professions, 
rarely  feel  themselves  called  to  take  up  this  work  ? 
If  it  be  true, — and  the  more  I  consider  it,  the  more 
I  fear  it  is  true, — is  there  any  possible  excuse  for 
it?  Any  relieving  feature  of  the  situation  which 
can  prevent  our  shame  and  disgrace  at  the  judg- 
ment seat  of  Christ  ?     Have  we  been  so  pampered 


OVER   AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


59 


\V> 


and  indulged  that  it  has  enervated  our  manhood, 
and  made  us  incapable  of  self-denial,  of  enduring 
hardship  ?  Or  have  we  in  reality  rather  despised 
the  name  of  missionary  as  one  fitted  for  the  man 
who  cannot  hope  for  anything  higher,  who  cannot 
command  the  world's  admiration  by  reason  of  his 
social  position  or  the  superior  culture  acquired 
through  unlimited  means  ?  I  confess,  friends,  that 
the  longer  I  look  at  it,  the  worse  it  seems,  to  think 
that  the  churches  and  our  Master  have  to  look  to 
the  men  of  small  means,  and  very  largely  to  the 
graduates  of  our  smaller  colleges,  and  particularly 
those  in  the  west,  for  the  supply  of  ambassadors 
for  Christ  to  foreign  lands.  It  is  a  condition  which 
I  have  accepted  without  thought,  as  quite  a  matter 
of  course,  until  to-night  it  impresses  itself  upon  me 
as  another  piece  of  insufferable  snobbishness,  not 
to  call  it  by  worse  names;  and  I  am  heartily 
ashamed  of  myself  for  permitting  it  to  have  any 
part  in  my  attitude  toward  this  matter. 

"Is  it  possible  that  I  could  for  a  moment  regard 
it  as  a  waste  of  time  and  talents  for  me  to  follow 
my  Master  in  this  work?  As  our  pastor  asked, 
Who  gave  me  the  time  and  the  strength  and  the 
talents,  and  for  what  purpose  ?  The  lawyers  may 
congratulate  themselves  on  having  one  less  competi- 
tor for  the  fat  fees  and  the  political  preferment. 
I  am  going  to  Korea,  where  the  people  are  begging 
for  more  missionaries,  or  to  China,  where  they  are 
not  begging  for  them,  but  need  them  quite  as  badly, 
to  teach  those  people  a  higher,  a  purer,  a  better 


60  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


law  than  any  on  our  statute  books,  even  the  law 
from  which  all  the  best  that  is  in  those  books  has 
come.  And  my  going  shall  never  cost  the  church 
one  cent.  The  money  with  which  God  has  blessed 
me  has  indeed  been  in  danger  of  cursing  me; 
but  it  shall  be  so  no  longer.  I  did  not  see  Christ 
this  morning;  but  I  have  seen  him  this  evening; 
and  life  is  a  different  thing." 

No  more  impressive  speech  had  been  made  than 
that  of  this  rich  young  man,  who  did  not  go  away 
sorrowful,  although  he  had  great  possessions. 
His  father  had  blanched  at  the  first  suggestion  of 
the  son's  intention  to  turn  aside  from  the  family's 
ambitious  plans  and  give  himself  to  mission  work; 
but  that  father  had  himself  been  too  truly  converted 
to-day  to  utter  or  even  think  one  protest;  and  the 
willing  sacrifice  was  laid  on  the  altar,  while  Mr. 
Stanton  offered  a  word  of  closing  prayer: 

"O  Master,  we  know  thee  better  to-night  than 
we  have  ever  known  thee  before,  and  we  love  thee 
better.  The  vision  of  thee  has  so  filled  our  eyes 
and  our  minds  and  our  hearts  as  to  blot  out  and  to 
cast  out  a  multitude  of  things  which  we  have  hither- 
to regarded  as  precious,  until  we  have  come  with 
Paul  to  count  them  but  dung  that  we  may  win 
Christ  and  be  found  in  him.  This  is  thy  holy 
temple:  here  we  have  built  our  altar  of  sacrifice, 
and  upon  it  we  have  laid  ourselves,  our  strength, 
our  talents,  our  time,  our  wealth,  our  poverty,  all 
that  makes  up  our  lives.  Send  down  the  fire,  O 
Lord,  from  heaven,  and  prove  thine  acceptance  of 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


our  offering  and  of  us;  and  may  that  fire  be  purity 
and  strength  and  glory  in  our  lives  henceforth,  as 
we  daily  practice  the  presence  of  the  living  Christ, 
and  grow  into  the  fullness  of  his  likeness.  In  his 
name,  Amen." 

At  the  close  of  this  simple  prayer,  the  pastor 
suggested  that,  not  for  the  sake  of  parade,  but  to 
make  the  idea  of  offering  to  the  present  Lord  as 
real  as  possible,  all  who  desired  to  present  money 
or  pledges  or  service  should  come  forward  in  orderly 
manner  and  place  their  offerings  in  the  treasury 
now,  reserving  for  another  evening  any  further 
narratives  of  experience  or  testimony  as  to  new 
convictions.  There  was  scarcely  one  in  the  house, 
even  down  to  the  smallest  child,  who  did  not  gladly 
respond ;  and  it  required  no  counting  of  the  con- 
tents to  assure  pastor  and  people  that  the  chest  con- 
tained many  times  as  much  as  it  had  ever  contained 
before.  After  the  benediction  there  was  far  more 
animated  conversation  than  there  had  been  in  the 
morning;  but  through  it  all  could  readily  be  de- 
tected a  tone  of  earnestness  and  a  tone  of  gladness 
such  as  nothing  but  a  new  acquaintance  with  Jesus 
Christ  and  with  the  realities  of  life  could  have 
produced.  It  seemed  to  John  Stanton  as  if  he  had 
lived  a  year  in  a  day;  but  he  went  home  with  a 
light  heart,  and  with  less  prospect  of  a  "blue 
Monday"  than  he  had  since  the  beginning  of  his 
ministry. 

"  I  never  have  admired  or  loved  you  as  much  as 
I  have  to-day,"  said  his  wife,  as  they  walked  home 


together.     "You  have  not  been,  and  I  will  not  be, 
disobedient  to  the  heavenly  vision." 

"And  the  strangest  thing  about  it,"  he  replied, 
"is  that,  after  all  our  Lord  said  about  his  constant 
presence,  we  should  need  to  have  such  a  vision  to 
make  him  real,  and  to  make  the  duties  and  privi- 
leges of  life  real!" 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY  63 


CHAPTER  V 

IT  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  chief  topic 
of  conversation  in  the  city  of  Jaconsett,  for  the 
next  three  days,  was  the  remarkable  events  of 
the  Sabbath  in  the  Westminster  Church,  more 
especially  when  it  transpired,  as  the  pastor  had  not 
intended  it  should,  that  the  annual  offering  of  the 
church  to  foreign  missions,  instead  of  being  about 
five  hundred  dollars,  ranged  well  over  ten  thousand 
dollars,  without  counting  Elder  Austin's  proposed 
endowment  of  the  theological  seminary;  and  that 
the  number  of  missionary  volunteers  from  the  con- 
gregation could  not  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of 
two  hands.  Some  were  sincerely  alarmed  lest  the 
church  should  be  impoverished,  or  various  forms 
of  Christian  work  languish,  through  the  drawing 
off  of  so  many  Christian  workers!  The  old  cry 
was  raised :  "  Wherefore  this  waste  ?  Why  wa£  not 
this  ointment  sold  for  three  hundred  pence  and 
given  to  the  poor  here  at  home?"  There  were 
indeed  certain  members  of  the  Home  Missionary 
Society  of  Westminster  Church  who  felt  morally 
certain  that  they  would  be  unable  to  raise  their 
usual  fifteen  hundred  dollars  for  that  board,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  other  boards.  (It  actually 
turned  out  afterward  that,  without  special  effort, 
simply  as  the  result  of  the  new  realization  of  the 
presence  of  Christ,  the  society  raised  five  thousand 


64  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


dollars,  and  every  other  board  benefited  in  like 
manner.  Hundreds  of  the  members  of  the  church 
had  simply  come  to  realize,  what  they  had  long 
believed  and  indefinitely  aspired  to,  that  to  them 
to  live  was  Christ,  and  so,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
all  Christ's  work  was  their  work,  and  their  money 
was  Christ's  money.  But  this  was  only  the  after 
out -working  of  the  new  spirit;  and,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  so  far  as  the  members  of  that  church  were 
concerned,  the  new  spirit  had  taken  possession  of 
so  large  a  majority  of  them  that  there  was  no 
grumbling,  no  envy,  no  apprehensions  of  losses, 
no  slightest  suggestion  of  waste.) 

As  to  the  members  of  other  churches,  and  the 
outside  world,  they  were  curious,  skeptical,  envious, 
or  apprehensive,  as  the  case  might  be.  Mr.  Stan- 
ton felt  sorry  for  the  prospects  of  the  other  pastors 
on  the  Wednesday  evening,  as  it  required  no 
prophet  to  foresee  that  the  prayer-meeting  room  at 
Westminster  would  be  altogether  too  small  to  hold 
the  people,  who,  from  interest  or  curiosity,  would 
gather  to  see  and  hear  any  later  developments  of 
the  new  idea  in  foreign  missions.  So  he  told  the 
sexton  to  open  the  main  auditorium  for  the  evening, 
and,  as  he  had  anticipated,  there  gathered  even  a 
larger  company  than  on  the  Sabbath  evening, 
including  not  a  few  of  the  usual  prayer-meeting 
attendants  at  neighboring  churches,  who  had  felt 
warranted  by  the  startling  character  of  the  reports 
which  had  come  to  them  in  absenting  themselves 
for    once    from    their    usual    places    of   worship. 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


Indeed,  one  neighboring  pastor,  interested  for  him- 
self and  for  his  people,  and  anticipating  very 
small  attendance  at  his  own  church,  had  posted  a 
notice  that  he  and  his  people  would  attend  the 
service  at  Westminster,  instead  of  holding  their 
own  meeting.  And  so  the  church  was  as  full  as  it 
had  ever  been  since  its  dedication. 

After  an  opening  hymn  had  been  sung,  and  por- 
tions of  Second  Corinthians,  eighth  and  ninth 
chapters,  read,  Mr.  Stanton  offered  a  prayer  in  the 
simple,  direct  style  which  had  already  become 
habitual  with  him  in  his  new  realization  of  Christ's 
constant  presence: 

"  Our  heavenly  Father,  we  owe  thee  everything, 
and  we  have  given  thee  very  little.  We  have  be- 
longed to  thee,  and  yet  have  counted  our  lives  and 
possessions  as  belonging  to  ourselves.  Thou  hast 
sought  to  reveal  thyself  to  us,  and  we  have  been 
dull  and  obtuse,  and  have  not  seen  thee.  Thou 
hast  called  us,  and  the  din  of  earth's  machinery,  the 
clang  of  the  world's  cymbals,  have  so  filled  our  ears 
that  we  have  not  heard  thee.  Thou  hast  tried  to 
guide  us  to  thy  glory  and  our  own  present  and  ever- 
lasting happiness,  and  we  have  preferred  the  guid- 
ance of  our  sin-biased  senses.  Thou  hast  sent 
us  into  thy  vineyard,  and  we  have  hung  about  the 
gate,  reluctant  to  bear  the  burden  and  heat  of  the 
day,  or  waiting  for  special  orders  as  to  the  place 
where  we  shall  work,  while  the  overripe  clusters 
are  dropping  from  the  vines.  Some  of  us  have  said 
that  we  would  go,  yet  we  went  not.  Some  of  us 
5 


66  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


have  plainly  refused  to  be  sent,  and  honored  our- 
selves for  our  lack  of  hypocrisy.  But  now,  O 
Father,  our  eyes  have  seen  thee,  and  we  abhor  our- 
selves and  repent  in  dust  and  ashes.  Wilt  thou 
forgive  us  all  the  mistakes  and  the  misunderstand- 
ings of  the  past,  and  make  such  unhappy  conditions 
impossible  for  us  in  all  the  future  by  fuller  and  ever 
fuller  revelations  of  thyself,  and,  consequently,  of 
our  own  hearts,  and  of  the  claim  of  our  fellow-men 
upon  us  ?  Thou  didst  greatly  move  our  hearts  on 
the  Sabbath  night  by  the  words  of  strong  conviction 
which  came  from  the  lips  and  hearts  of  brethren 
honored  among  us  for  their  works'  sake,  who  had 
yet  been  brought  into  the  presence  of  new  ideals, 
and  so  possessed  of  new  ambitions  for  themselves 
and  for  thy  kingdom.  Grant,  O  Lord,  that  to- 
night we  may  see  yet  more  abundantly  the  outpour- 
ing of  thy  grace  in  the  power  of  thy  Spirit.  We 
are  here  to  present  ourselves  before  thee  that  thou 
mayest  take  us  as  we  are  and  transform  us  into 
vessels  most  meet  for  the  Master's  use  and  prepared 
unto  every  good  work.  We  would  see  Jesus,  and 
become  unconscious  of  the  presence  of  others. 
In  his  name,  Amen." 

Then  followed  a  brief,  unembellished  statement 
of  the  events  of  the  previous  Sabbath,  and  an  in- 
vitation to  all  the  members  of  the  church  and  con- 
gregation to  express  the  thoughts  which,  having 
proved  profitable  to  them,  might  also  prove  profit- 
able to  the  assembled  company.     He  concluded: 

"Most  of  us  made  our  offerings  on   Sabbath 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


67 


:*» 


evening;  but,  that  we  may  continue  to  realize  as 
far  as  possible  that  our  Lord  is  sitting  by  the  treas- 
ury, watching  us  most  lovingly  and  longingly,  and 
listening  to  every  word  we  speak,  I  have  left  the 
treasury  in  its  former  place,  where  it  may  also 
serve  for  the  reception  of  any  belated  offerings. 
Who  has  a  burden  of  regret  or  of  joy  which  he  will 
permit  us  to  share?" 

"I  have  a  burden  of  both,  Mr.  Stanton,"  re- 
sponded a  man  of  middle  age,  as  he  came  forward 
to  the  treasury.  "I  have  been  one  of  the  chronic 
objectors  to  every  suggestion  along  the  line  of 
foreign  missions.  I  have  made  every  one  of  those 
already  mentioned  on  Sunday,  and  at  least  a  score 
of  others.  And  every  one  of  them  now  appears  to 
me  to  have  been  nothing  less  than  the  old  plea, 
'I  pray  thee  have  me  excused.'  Not  one  of  them 
will  hold  water,  yet  I  have  repeated  them  so  often 
that  they  had  come  to  appear  to  me  as  cold  logic. 
If  one  of  them  was  answered  for  me,  I  could  al- 
ways take  refuge  in  another,  and  after  the  dis- 
cussion was  over,  those  objections  that  had  been 
knocked  out  always  lived  to  fight  another  day. 

"There  is  that  objection,  'It  takes  ninety-nine 
cents  to  send  one  cent  to  the  heathen.'  I  must 
have  known  that  it  was  at  least  an  enormous  exag- 
geration, especially  in  view  of  the  number  of  times 
I  had  heard  it  authoritatively  contradicted;  yet  I 
repeated  it  on  numerous  occasions.  These  last 
three  days  I  have  been  looking  the  matter  up,  and 
have  discovered  that,  instead  of  ninetv-nine  cents 


c  -!S 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


to  send  one  cent,  it  actually  takes  but  five  to  seven 
cents  to  send  a  whole  dollar,  and  that  there  is  no 
other  business  in  the  world,  equally  extended  and 
many-phased,  administered  in  anything  like  so 
economical  a  manner. 

"That  is  just  a  sample  of  the  absolute  perver- 
sion, the  wicked  distortion,  of  facts,  of  which  self- 
excusers  like  myself  are  daily  guilty.  Think  of- 
that  other  objection,  which  I  have  rolled  as  a  sweet 
morsel  under  my  tongue,  'It  is  a  great  waste  of 
funds,  and  the  church  and  the  country  cannot  af- 
ford it.'  My  friends,  I  came  across  a  statement  to- 
day, backed  up  by  statistics,  which  fairly  made  my 
hair  stand  on  end.  It  was  this:  '  Out  of  every  one 
thousand  dollars  spent  in  this  country,  two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  go  for  food,  two  hundred  and 
eighteen  dollars  for  clothing,  five  hundred  dollars, 
for  intoxicating  liquors  and  tobacco,  thirty  dollars 
for  other  purposes,  and  two  dollars  for  foreign 
missions.'  The  man  who  first  sees  that  statement 
will  be  disposed  to  question  its  truth;  but  there  is 
abundant  evidence  for  it.  Talk  about  your  waste! 
Five  hundred  dollars  for  poison  and  smoke,  and 
two  dollars  to  send  the  gospel  to  millions  of  heathen! 
I  tell  you,  friends,  it  broke  me  all  up;  for,  while  I 
have  not  spent  my  money  in  just  that  way,  I  found, 
when  I  went  to  figuring,  that  the  percentage  that  I 
had  spent  on  my  own  ease  and  comfort  and  pleasure 
and  luxury,  and  the  percentage  that  went  to  foreign 
missions  were  relatively  not  very  far  from  those 
figures.     It  made  me  feel  as  if  I  should  like  to 


TFB 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


69 


reverse  the  figures  for  a  few  years  to  come;  and  I 
wanted  to  hunt  up  every  man  on  whom  I  had  ever 
used  that  argument  and  get  him  to  kick  me,  I  felt 
so  mean. 

"Did  you  ever  think  why  the  Chinese  and  the 
Africans  are  still  worshiping  their  idols?  It  has 
just  come  over  me  that  it  is  simply  because  we  are 
still  worshiping  ours;  that's  all.  They  call  theirs 
Buddha  or  Pusa,  or  something  or  other,  while 
ours  is  the  '  almighty  dollar,'  or  the  good  things  that 
dollar  will  buy.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  difference 
in  appearance  between  their  idols  and  ours,  but 
they  don't  begin  to  squander  the  time  and  the 
heart  on  theirs  that  we  do  on  ours.  I  know  it 
must  seem  strange  to  you  to  hear  me  talking  in  this 
way, — rather  like  Saul  among  the  prophets;  but 
it's  just  come  over  me  like  a  flood,  and  I'm  not  the 
same  man  I  was  last  week. 

"Then  there's  that  awful  lie  about  sending  sp 
many  missionaries  abroad  that  there  wouldn't 
be  anybody  left  to  preach  the  gospel  in  America. 
I've  looked  that  up  too,  and  I've  discovered  that 
one  twentieth  of  the  people  in  the  world  now  have 
nineteen  twentieths  of  the  ministers  and  Christian 
workers  to  look  after  them,  while  the  other  nine- 
teen twentieths  of  the  world  have  one  twentieth  of 
these  workers;  that  even  now  only  one  in  twenty  of 
our  theological  graduates  is  going  abroad,  and  that 
there  are  more  Methodist  ministers  in  the  one  city 
of  Chicago  than  there  are  in  the  whole  empire  of 
China.     And  all  the  time  there  isn't  a  man,  woman 


70  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


or  child  in  America  who  has  not  heard,  or  cannot 
readily  hear,  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  while 
more  than  half  the  population  of  China  have  never 
heard  it  at  all. 

"I've  no  doubt  that  some  of  you  have  heard  me 
say  also  that  the  task  is  absolutely  hopeless,  so 
there  is  no  use  attempting  it.  I  suspect  my  partners 
think  I  haven't  been  giving  very  close  attention  to 
business  since  Sunday;  but  I've  had  more  im- 
portant business  than  selling  groceries  these  days, 
and  that  was  getting  right  with  God.  So  I  have 
been  studying  up  this  matter  too,  and  I  find  that, 
in  spite  of  the  way  the  church  has  been  merely 
playing  at  missions,  putting  the  pennies  and  the 
nickels  into  that  and  the  dollars  and  the  eagles  into 
everything  else,  the  work  has  been  blest  most 
wonderfully,  so  that  there  is  not  a  mission  field  on 
which  the  proportion  of  Christians  is  not  increasing 
more  rapidly  than  the  population,  while  there  are 
many  fields  in  China,  Korea,  India,  the  Philippines, 
and  elsewhere,  in  which  whole  communities  have 
become  Christian;  and  like  the  Fiji  and  Sandwich 
Islands,  which  have  quite  ceased  to  be  heathen. 
Great  movements  are  on  foot  in  many  of  these  lands 
which  indicate  yet  more  wonderful  results  in  years 
soon  to  come.  These  are  critical  times  in  many 
lands,  and  ten  dollars  now  may  accomplish  what 
nine  hundred  dollars  will  not  do  ten  years  hence. 

"I  just  want  to  mention  one  more  of  my  old 
stock  objections,  and  then  this  long  speech  is 
ended,  and  I  sit  down.     I  don't  know  how  many 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY  71 


times  I  have  said  it  was  of  no  use  to  send  mission- 
aries to  the  heathen  because  you  couldn't  possibly 
make  a  good  Christian  out  of  a  pagan;  they  were 
all  rice-Christians,  and  the  more  rice  the  more 
Christian.  That  also  was  a  lie,  for  if  ever  the  rice 
was  taken  away  from  a  man  pretty  effectually,  it 
was  during  that  Boxer  outbreak  out  there  in  China. 
Yet  hundreds  of  those  Christians,  without  rice, 
without  clothing,  without  shelter,  without  friends, 
without  mercy,  stood  faithful  unto  death,  when  a 
few  words,  or  a  simple  act  of  idolatrous  worship, 
would  have  secured  life  and  mercy  and  friends  and 
clothing  and  food — with  God's  displeasure.  Na- 
tive Christians  in  other  lands  have  endured  similar 
trials  of  faith  in  like  fashion.  I  tell  you  it  makes  me 
ashamed  when  I  think  how  I  have  failed  to  lend  a 
hand  to  help  them,  and  to  make  more  Christians 
like  them.  I  wish  we  had  more  of  that  kind  of 
pagans  here  in  America. 

"  Brethren,  I've  done.  I  put  into  that  treasury 
on  Sundav  night  a  hundred  times  what  I've  ever 
given  before;  but  I've  learned  something  since 
then,  so  I  am  going  to  double  it  to-night,  and  may 
God  help  Ralph  Jackson  henceforth  to  live  up  to 
the  light  that  he  has  as  well  as  many  of  those  con- 
verted heathen  are  doing  it." 

It  was  a  most  excellent  beginning,  and  no  one 
felt  regret  that  Mr.  Jackson  had  used  so  much  time. 
His  speech  started  Mr.  James  Waterson  to  his 
feet,  a  man  of  about  the  same  age,  president  of  one 
of  the  banks  of  Jaconsett. 


mmmtY 

OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


"Speaking  of  objections,"  he  began,  "that  has 
been  my  chief  relation  to  the  cause  of  foreign  mis- 
sions until  a  few  months  ago;  and  one  of  my  favor- 
ite objections  has  been  that  the  present  policy  of 
the  boards  is  all  wrong  in  two  particulars.  First, 
they  support  the  missionaries  in  altogether  too 
comfortable  a  style;  and,  second,  they  do  not  ex- 
ercise sufficient  faith  in  their  plans  and  work.  I 
have  always  argued,  with  regard  to  the  first  point, 
that  the  missionary  who  goes  to  Africa  should  live 
as  the  Africans  do,  and  the  one  who  goes  to  China 
as  the  Chinese  do,  both  for  purposes  of  economy, 
and  that  thus  the  natives  may  easily  be  won  from 
their  own  level. 

"Well,  as  you  know,  I  got  interested  in  that  new 
men's  movement,  when  I  was  urged  very  hard  by 
friends  to  visit  the  foreign  missions.  As  I  badly 
needed  a  change,  and  had  planned  some  day  to 
make  the  grand  tour,  I  scraped  together  my  savings 
and  went  along.  That  trip  opened  my  eyes  to  a 
lot  of  things.  At  first  glance  it  did  seem,  in  some 
places,  as  if  the  missionaries  of  some  churches  were 
living  in  a  greater  degree  of  comfort  than  was  abso- 
lutely necessary,  or  advantageous  to  the  work;  but 
when  one  came  to  study  their  surroundings,  and 
see  the  manner  of  the  native  living,  several  things 
were  revealed.  In  the  first  place,  the  proposition 
that  the  missionary  should  live  like  the  ordinary 
native  was  relegated  at  once  to  the  region  of  im- 
possibilities. The  experiment  has  been  tried  more 
than  once,   and  invariably  with  one  or   another 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


73 


of  three  results — the  missionary  either  died  young, 
was  invalided  home,  perhaps  to  die  there,  or  found 
that,  with  his  utmost  endeavor,  he  could  not  make 
himself  a  native,  and  had  to  spend  at  least  three 
or  four  times  the  native  salary  to  keep  in  any  meas- 
ure of  health  and  attain  any  measure  of  efficiency. 
This  last  outcome  at  once  introduced  the  whole 
difficulty  of  native  envy  and  criticism  which  the 
foreign  style  of  living  was  said  to  produce,  with  this 
further  complication,  that  the  native  naturally  ex- 
pects the  foreign  style  of  living  to  cost  more  than 
his  own,  and  expects  the  foreigner  to  live  as  he 
would  at  home,  but  does  not  see  any  good  reason 
why  the  foreigner  who  lives  like  the  native  should 
not  do  it  on  the  same  expenditure,  and  consequently 
suspects  him  of  unwillingness  to  practice  self- 
denial.  On  the  other  hand,  in  view  of  the  require- 
ments of  the  climate  in  most  mission  fields,  in 
view  of  the  large  amount  of  entertaining,  both  of 
foreigners  and  natives,  which  must  be  done,  and 
in  view  of  the  comparative  cheapness  and  in- 
efficiency of  the  native  servants  engaged,  I  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  most  of  the  missionaries  and 
their  boards  were  doing  neither  an  extravagant  nor 
an  inexpedient  thing  in  making  the  standard  of 
living  abroad  about  what  it  would  be  if  the  mis- 
sionaries were  in  charge  of  moderate  sized  churches 
at  home.  Moreover,  I  think  it  is  high  time  that  we 
quit  thinking  that  because  a  man  gives  up  nearly 
everything  of  this  life  to  go  as  a  foreign  missionary, 
he  should  therefore  be  either  required  or  expected 


74 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


TS3£> 


to  give  up  everything  else  when  he  gets  there,  while 
the  man  who  stays  in  America  is,  by  that  fact,  ex- 
cused from  giving  up  anything.  In  the  midst  of 
that  heathen  darkness  and  vileness  and  supersti- 
tion, if  anywhere  in  this  wide  world,  a  man  would 
be  excusable  for  surrounding  himself  with  a  little 
of  that  atmosphere  of  home  comfort  and  refinement 
which  are  so  common  with  us.  I  have  noticed 
that  it  always  makes  a  vast  difference  in  a  man's 
ideas  on  this  subject  when  one  of  his  own  family,  or 
a  personal  friend,  goes  to  the  foreign  field. 

"As  to  the  faith  problem,  is  there  any  more 
reason  that  one  board  should  commission  its  men 
and  women  and  send  them  forth  among  the  heathen 
with  no  assurance  of  an  income,  than  that  another 
board  should  do  the  same  thing  in  America?  or 
why  the  board  should  be  expected  to  take  a  stand 
which  the  church  it  represents,  and  to  which  it  is 
subject,  will  not  take?  It  happens  that  I  have  run 
across,  in  my  journeyings,  some  of  the  operations 
of  that  theory.  I  knew  of  one  case  where  a  self- 
styled  'faith  missionary,'  who  was  quite  in  the 
habit  of  looking  down  upon  and  criticising  those 
who  had  fixed  incomes,  because  they  were  trusting 
to  men  and  not  to  God,  ran  out  of  funds  and  out 
of  health  at  the  same  time.  For  the  sake  of  her 
own  health  and  that  of  a  child  she  was  compelled 
to  go  to  a  seaside  resort,  although  she  had  often 
severely  criticised  others  for  spending  time  there; 
was  provided  there  with  a  house,  food  and  care  by 
missionaries  with  fixed  incomes,  and  then  thanked 


T51 


OVER   AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


75 


the  Lord  that  the  principle  of  faith  had  triumphed 
and  the  Lord  had  provided  for  her  in  answer  to 
prayer!  And  I  knew  of  another  family  who  re- 
ceived no  remittance  from  their  faith  mission  for 
many  months.  Food  and  clothing  were  exhausted, 
funds  were  absolutely  lacking;  they  ran  up  long 
accounts  with  the  trustful  heathen  dealers  in  food 
supplies,  and  at  length,  in  imminent  clanger  of 
starving,  managed  to  borrow  enough  money  from 
the  natives  to  get  them  to  the  port,  where  they  threw 
themselves  on  the  bounty  of  more  definitely  pro- 
vided-for  missionaries. 

"I  am  not  decrying  faith,  but  simply  the  sort  of 
faith  wmich  divorces  itself  from  sound  judgment, 
and  tempts  the  Lord  by  going  ahead  of  him.  That 
the  church  at  home  is  holding  the  boards  and  the 
missionaries  and  the  kingdom  of  God  back  by  a 
great  lack  of  true  faith,  I  firmly  believe;  but  we 
are  not  going  to  throw  the  blame  on  the  board  and 
the  missionaries,  and  be  blameless. 

"  So  you  see,  friends,  that  a  trip  around  the  world, 
seeing  things  as  they  actually  are,  is  quite  apt  to 
puncture  the  objections  which  have  been  inflated 
by  frequent  blowing  to  such  enormous  proportions 
that  they  stop  the  entrance  to  God's  treasury,  and 
clog  our  own  hearts  to  the  entrance  of  his  blessing 
at  the  same  time.  I  thank  God  that  he  has  opened 
my  eyes  to  see  things  as  they  are;  but  I  don't  intend 
to  take  the  expenses  of  my  eye-opening  operations 
out  of  my  contributions  to  foreign  missions.  The 
new    movement    aims    at   a   fivefold    increase   as 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


speedily  as  possible.  Some  will  not  do  half  that,  I 
fear,  so  I  mean  to  make  mine  tenfold  as  long  as 
the  Lord  prospers  me.  It  is  all  his  anyway,  and  I 
am  sure  that  he  wants  that  much  for  his  work." 


1w 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


77 


CHAPTER  VI 

i  i  A  S  long  as  we  are  on  the  subject  of  excuses, 
/A  perhaps  I  might  venture  a  word  with  re- 
gard to  another  sort,"  came,  in  a  strong, 
clear  voice,  from  the  rear  of  the  church.  A  young 
man  in  the  early  twenties  came  briskly  forward.  He 
was  a  son  of  the  church,  a  senior  in  the  theological 
seminary.  He  was  at  home  for  a  few  days  before 
his  graduation.  "  I  can  never  be  sufficiently  thank- 
ful that  I  was  at  home  just  at  this  time,  for  I  feel 
that  the  experiences  of  these  few  days  will  make 
all  the  difference  in  my  life  between  success  and 
defeat.  I  had  considered  myself  well  intrenched 
against  all  arguments  on  the  subject.  We  have 
had  numerous  missionaries  and  student  volunteer 
secretaries  at  the  seminary ;  and  I  have  either  man- 
aged to  steer  clear  of  them  all,  or,  if  cornered,  have 
glibly  poured  out  one  reason  after  another  why  I 
should  not  go  to  the  foreign  field.  When  I  came 
home  the  other  day,  there  was  nothing  farther 
from  my  thoughts  than  going  as  a  missionary, 
either  foreign  or  home;  but  now  I  have  no  inten- 
tion of  staying  in  this  country  if  God  permits  me 
to  go.  The  explanation  of  this  radical  change  is 
simply  that  every  one  of  those  'reasons'  for  staying 
at  home  stood  out  clearly  marked  'excuse'  when  I 
could  see  Christ  sitting  over  against  the  treasury. 
Not  one  of  them  could  be  presented  to  him  with 


c 


78 


OVER   AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


any  hope  of  acceptance;  and  I  had  finally  to  throw 
them  all  overboard,  and  tell  him  that  if  he  wants 
me  I  am  ready  to  go. 

"I  had  to  go  farther  than  that,  however,  for  just 
there  lay  one  of  my  most  persistent  excuses,  the 
last  to  be  got  rid  of — the  excuse  of  the  lack  of  a 
special  call.  In  this,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  I  had  been 
strongly  supported  by  one  of  our  seminary  profes- 
sors, who  felt  very  strongly  on  the  subject  of  the 
special  call  to  the  ministry,  and  the  special  call  to 
a  particular  portion  of  the  field.  Some  of  the 
students  have  urged  him  to  define  it,  and  his  reply 
is,  'Being  purely  spiritual,  it  is  very  hard  to  de- 
fine; but  when  it  comes  you  will  recognize  it  as 
being  different  from  anything  else.'  Asked  if  it 
were  an  audible  voice,  he  replied:  'No:  it  is  not 
audible  to  the  ear  of  the  flesh,  but  to  the  ear  of  the 
soul.  It  is  a  conviction,  not  based  upon  reasoning, 
but  directly  from  the  Spirit,  that  you  are  to  go  to  a 
certain  work  in  a  certain  place.'  This  sort  of  in- 
definiteness  just  suited  most  of  us,  for,  if  we  left 
our  reason  out  of  the  account,  we  had  very  little 
difficulty  in  persuading  ourselves  that  a  definitely 
written,  signed  and  labeled  'call'  from  an  American 
church,  at  twelve  hundred  to  three  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year,  was  much  more  positive  than  an  in- 
definite appeal  from  the  Board  of  Foreign  Mis- 
sions to  go  somewhere  in  the  foreign  field  at  one 
thousand  dollars  per  year;  and  the  larger  the  church, 
the  louder  the  call. 

"Strange  to  say,  we  did  not  carry  this  latter 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


79 


--^ 


logic  any  farther,  and  compare  the  field  of  a  million 
heathen  with  the  home  field  of  a  thousand  or  two 
nominal  Christians.  Indeed,  according  to  our 
professor,  the  question  of  relative  need  should 
hardly  be  considered,  for  the  question  of  a  call 
was  one  not  for  the  judgment  but  for  the  emotions. 
And  I  was  very  certain  that  none  of  my  feelings 
drew  me  to  India  or  Africa. 

"Ah,  friends,  the  matter  looks  very  different  to 
me  now,  and  especially  since  I  came  across  a 
foreign  mission  parable  in  a  paper  to-day.  It  is 
not  very  long,  and,  with  your  permission,  I  will 
read  it.     It  is  entitled: 


"As  It  Was  Not  in  the  Days  of  Jesus  Christ 
"  'And  they  went  away  in  the  boat  to  a  desert  place  apart. 
And  the  people  saw  them  going,  and  many  knew  them, 
and  they  ran  together  there  on  foot  from  all  the  cities,  and 
outwent  them.  And  he  came  forth  and  saw  a  great  multi- 
tude, and  he  had  compassion  on  them,  because  they  were 
as  sheep  not  having  a  shepherd:  and  he  began  to  teach 
them  many  things.  And  when  the  day  was  now  far  spent, 
his  disciples  came  unto  him,  and  said,  The  place  is  desert, 
and  the  day  is  now  far  spent;  send  them  away,  that  they 
may  go  into  the  country  and  villages  round  about,  and  buy 
themselves  somewhat  to  eat.  But  he  answered  and  said 
unto  them,  Give  ye  them  to  eat.  And  they  say  unto  him, 
Shall  we  go  and  buy  two  hundred  shillings'  worth  of 
bread,  and  give  them  to  eat?  And  he  saith  unto  them, 
How  many  loaves  have  ye?  go  and  see.  And  when 
they  knew,  they  say,  Five,  and  two  fishes.  And  he  com- 
manded them  that  all  should  sit  down  by  companies  upon 
the  green  grass.  And  they  sat  down  in  ranks,  by  hundreds, 
and  by  fifties.     And  he  took  the  five   loaves  and  the  two 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


fishes,  and  looking  up  to  heaven,  he  blessed,  and  brake 
the  loaves;  and  he  gave  to  the  disciples  to  set  before  them; 
and  the  two  fishes  divided  he  among  them  all.' 

"Now  when  the  disciples  had  received  the  bread  and 
the  fishes,  they  first  sat  down  upon  the  green  grass  and  ate 
and  were  filled.  While  they  were  so  doing,  they  began  to 
say  among  themselves,  'If  a  man  provide  not  first  for  his 
own,  he  is  worse  than  a  heathen  and  a  publican.  Where- 
fore, let  us  first  look  about  for  baskets,  wherein  we  may 
store  some  of  this  food,  lest,  to-morrow  and  the  day  after, 
we  and  the  Master  may  lack  bread,  and  know  not  where 
to  look  for  that  which  is  needful  to  sustain  and  cheer  us.' 
So  all  the  disciples,  save  John,  the  brother  of  James,  sought 
them  out  baskets,  and  filled  twelve  of  them  to  overflowing 
with  the  bread  and  fishes  which  Jesus  had  broken,  while 
John  set  off  alone  to  give  the  hungry  multitudes  to  eat. 

"And  it  came  to  pass  that  when  the  eleven  disciples  had 
filled  the  baskets  and  set  them  aside,  they  said  again  one 
to  another,  'It  were  great  shame  not  to  make  use  of  this 
abundance,  while  it  is  in  our  hands,  to  provide  still  further 
against  the  future  of  our  so  uncertain  lives.  Yonder 
market  has  not  yet  closed  for  the  day,  and  this  food  will 
bring  good  money  on  the  market,  which  will  serve  for 
capital  wherewith  to  carry  on  our  work  and  provide  for 
our  families  as  well.  He  who  liveth  only  in  the  present, 
and  taketh  no  thought  for  the  future,  doeth  foolishly. 
Let  us  put  our  Lord's  pound  into  the  hands  of  the  banker, 
that  in  the  future  he  may  receive  his  own  with  usury.' 

"It  therefore  seemed  good  unto  them  to  separate  seven 
of  their  number  unto  the  work  of  carrying  other  baskets 
full  of  the  bread  and  fishes  (what  a  pity  that  it  had  been 
broken !)  to  the  neighboring  market  town,  where  it  found  a 
ready  sale,  and  the  silver,  the  price  thereof,  gave  forth  a 
pleasant  sound  as  it  fell  into  the  bag  of  Judas  Iscariot 
(who  also  betrayed  Him). 

"Now  after  that  the  seven  had  departed,  three  of  the 
other   disciples    joined    themselves    to    John    in    carrying 


the  bread  and  fishes  to  the  hungry  multitudes.  And  it 
came  to  pass  that,  because  the  first  five  hundred  of  these 
people  were  near  at  hand,  they  gave  first  to  them;  and 
because  they  were  old  neighbors  from  among  the  fisher 
folk  near  Bethsaida  of  Galilee,  they  went  back  and  forth, 
back  and  forth  among  them,  to  make  sure  that  all  were 
filled  to  the  full,  and  that  none  failed  to  comprehend 
accurately  the  details  of  the  chemical  processes  involved 
in  the  mastication  and  digestion  of  food.  But  when  John 
saw  how  great  was  the  multitude,  and  how  few  were  the 
laborers,  his  heart,  like  the  Master's,  was  moved  with 
compassion  toward  them,  and,  when  next  he  returned  to 
the  Master  for  a  supply  of  the  food,  he  said,  'Master,  shall 
I  not  go  to  the  multitudes  beyond?  Surely  thou  didst 
break  the  bread  for  them  also!  But  what  am  I  among  so 
many?  Canst  not  thou  thrust  forth  more  laborers  into 
this  work?'  And  the  Master  made  answer,  'My  disciple, 
thou  hast  judged  rightly  my  purpose.  I  have  sent  you 
twelve  unto  the  whole  multitude;  and  thou  alone  hast 
comprehended  my  meaning.  The  others  have,  in  whole 
or  in  part,  failed  to  heed  the  thrusting  which  I  have  given 
them.  Go,  meet  the  greatest  need,  and  thou  shalt  do  well.' 
"Now  as  John  turned  away  to  hasten  with  bread  to 
the  hungry,  he  findeth  Peter  standing  there,  his  arms 
filled  with  bread  and  fishes,  but  looking  uncertainly  this 
way  and  that.  And  when  he  saw  him  he  cried  out,  '  Simon, 
what  aileth  thee,  the  energetic  and  impetuous?  Dost 
thou  not  see  yonder  multitude  to  whom  no  man  is  minis- 
tering? Bring  thy  load  of  food  and  come  with  me.' 
Simon  Peter  answered,  saying,  'The  Master  hath  not  given 
me  special  instructions  as  to  whither  I  should  go;  and  I 
dare  not  leave  these  .five  hundred  old  neighbors  without  a 
special  call.'  Now  Jesus  overheard  the  words  of  the  two 
disciples,  and  he  turned  him  about  and  looked  upon  Peter 
with  grief  and  indignation  in  his  face  and  in  his  voice,  as 
he  said,  'O  thou  foolish  disciple!  Hath  not  thy  Father  in 
heaven  given  thee  eyes  to  see,  and  ears  to  hear,  a  mind  to 


82  OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASUR 


think  and  a  heart  to  feel?  Lift  up  thine  eyes  and  look! 
Canst  thou  not  see  the  thousands  still  hungry  and  unfed? 
Canst  thou  not  see  many  of  them  wandering  away,  fainting 
and  in  despair,  perhaps  to  fall  by  the  wayside,  while  others 
are  pulling  and  eating  the  grass  about  them  in  a  vain 
attempt  to  satisfy  their  hunger?  Open  thine  ears  and 
listen!  Canst  thou  not  hear  their  despairing  cry,  "Come 
over  and  help  us?"  Exercise  they  mind!  Canst  thou  not 
decide  where  the  bread  and  the  fishes  in  thy  hand  are  the 
most  keenly  needed  and  will  do  the  most  good?  Enlarge 
thy  heart,  that  this  need  may  appeal  to  thee  as  it  appeals  to 
thy  Master;  and  ask  me  not  for  a  special  call.  Have  I 
not  said  unto  you,  "Give  ye  them  to  eat?"  Trouble  not 
thyself  about  the  sufficiency  of  the  supply  for  present  or 
for  future  needs.  Cannot  he  who  has  broken  the  bread 
unto  you  once,  break  it  again  if  there  be  need?'  And 
Simon  Peter  asked  no  longer  for  what  had  already  been 
given  him,  the  special  call  of  a  special  need. 

"Now  it  came  to  pass  that  night  came  on  before  the 
seven  disciples  could  return  from  the  market  town,  whither 
they  had  gone  to  sell  the  bread  and  the  fishes.  And  there 
were  those  who  had  looked  with  covetous  eyes  upon  the 
silver  which  they  had  received;  and  there  followed  them 
from  the  market  ten  men  of  the  baser  sort  well  armed 
with  clubs,  who  fell  upon  them  in  the  darkness,  wounded 
them  sore,  and  took  from  them  not  only  what  they  had 
gained,  but  also  the  scanty  hoard  which  Judas  had  afore- 
time carried  in  the  bag. 

"As  the  disciples  crawled  along  the  road  to  find  the 
Master,  they  heard  the  moans  of  one  and  another  of  the 
five  thousand  who  had  been  left  unfed,  and  had  wandered 
off  into  the  night.  Humiliated  and  sore,  they  rested  on 
the  mountain  side  that  night,  and  awoke  the  next  morning 
still  weary  and  again  hungry.  Most  eagerly  did  they 
uncover  the  twelve  baskets  of  food  so  prudently  reserved; 
but  to  their  confusion  and  dismay  the  food  had  all  bred 
worms  and  stank.      'Said  I  not  unto  you,'  spake    Jesus, 


J 


3 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


83 


"Seek  ye  first  his  kingdom,  and  his  righteousness;  and 
all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you?  Lay  not  up 
for  yourselves  treasures  upon  the  earth,  where  moth  and 
rust  doth  consume,  and  where  thieves  break  through  and 
steal :  but  lay  up  for  yourselves  treasures  in  heaven,  where 
neither  moth  nor  rust  doth  consume,  and  where  thieves  do 
not  break  through  nor  steal.  There  is  that  scattereth, 
and  increaseth  yet  more  ;  and  there  is  that  withholdeth 
more  than  is  meet,  but  it  tendeth  only  to  want.'"" 

When  he  had  finished  reading,  the  student  con- 
tinued: "It  now  seems  to  me  as  plain  as  day  that 
the  man  who  will  not  use  the  brains  God  has  given 
him,  and  the  word  of  God  in  the  Scriptures,  has 
no  right  whatever  to  expect  that  God  will  give 
him  the  special  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the 
determination  of  practical  questions  of  life  work. 
While  God  certainly  does  help  those  who  cannot 
help  themselves,  I  am  sure  there  is  no  promise  that 
he  will  help  those  who  will  not  help  themselves; 
and  I  don't  see  any  more  reason  why  a  young 
student  of  theology  should  wait  for  a  mysterious 
supernatural  voice  to  direct  his  choice  of  a  field 
than  to  direct  his  choice  of  a  seminary  or  a  book  or 
a  typewriter.  Let  him  exercise  to  the  full  the 
powers  of  judgment  which  God  has  given  him,  all 
the  time  asking  God  to  direct,  or,  if  need  be,  over- 
rule, that  judgment,  and  I  believe  he  will  know 
ten  times  more  infallibly  than  by  waiting  for  the 
mysterious  voice.  I  still  believe  with  all  my  heart 
in  the  'still  small  voice,'  but  I  don't  believe  it  was 
ever  intended  to  supplant  sanctified  common 
sense  and  judgment.     The  very  man  who  insists 


\\ 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


upon  it  with  reference  to  the  foreign  call  never 
thinks  of  waiting  for  it  to  decide  between  two  home 
churches  which  have  called  him  at  the  same  time. 
He  sits  down  and  studies  the  two  calls,  considers 
the  size  and  condition  of  the  churches  and  the 
manses,  the  salaries,  the  length  of  vacations,  and 
above  all, — to  put  it  charitably, — the  size  of  the 
fields  and  their  relative  needs;  and,  with  prayer  for 
guidance,  he  lets  his  judgment  decide. 

"But  I  have  talked  long  enough.  The  reason  I 
feel  so  strongly  is  because  I  have  just  been  through 
it  all  myself.  And  now,  God  willing,  I  am  going 
as  a  foreign  missionary,  called  by  the  greatest  of 
all  calls,  the  call  of  the  greatest  need  to  the  man 
who  is  free  to  go  anywhere,  while  many  others  are 
not." 

"Will  you  hear  just  one  more  student  from  the 
same  school?"  called  another  voice  before  the  last 
speaker  had  even  resumed  his  seat.  "Even  my 
classmate  there  did  not  know  I  was  here,  and  I  am 
the  last  member  of  the  class  from  whom  he  would 
expect  to  hear  the  sort  of  testimony  I  am  about  to 
give.  He  knows  what  a  hobby  I  have  made  of  the 
study  of  comparative  religions,  and  how  strongly  I 
have  urged  that  the  various  ethnic  religions  are 
really  only  different  forms  of  the  worship  of  the 
one  true  God,  with  blemishes,  it  is  true,  but  each 
one  especially  adapted  to  the  genius  of  a  particular 
people,  the  evolution  of  their  need,  and  to  them 
really  the  embodiment  of  the  one  eternal  truth.  I 
have  maintained  that  the  followers  of  each  religion, 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


in  all  the  various  forms  of  their  worship,  were  true 
seekers  after  God;  and  I  have  gone  almost  to  the 
length  of  the  self-styled  'New  Theology'  in  per- 
suading myself  that  even  men's  sins  and  vices  are 
an  endeavor  to  find  God  and  fitly  worship  him. 
In  these  things  I  went  far  beyond  any  of  our  pro- 
fessors; partly,  I  now  think,  in  my  eager  anxiety 
to  quench  the  'still  small  voice'  that  has  for  years 
been  calling  to  me,  'Come  over  and  help  us! 
Come  over  and  help  us!' 

"Coming  to  town  to-day,  and  hearing  some  con- 
versation about  the  events  of  the  past  few  days  in 
this  church,  I  concluded  to  stay  over  and  attend  the 
meeting  to-night.  As  I  wanted  to  surprise  my 
classmate,  I  did  not  go  to  his  home,  but  stepped 
into  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  rooms.  Running  my  eye 
over  the  books  in  the  library,  I  noticed  'Students 
and  the  Modern  Missionary  Crusade,'  the  report 
of  the  Nashville  Convention  of  the  Student  Volun- 
teer Movement.  Such  literature  has  not  been  very 
familiar  to  me  in  the  past,  but  I  took  the  volume 
aside  and  opened  it  at  random.  My  eye  fell  upon 
an  address  entitled  'The  Non-Christian  Religions 
Inadequate  to  Meet  the  Needs  of  Men.'  Could 
it  be  that  I  was  wrong  ?  The  maker  of  that  address 
was  not  given,  I  knew,  to  speaking  rashly;  in 
everything  but  the  missionary  question  I  had  a 
great  admiration  for  him.  If  he  was  right,  then  I 
was  wrong. 

"I  started  to  read  the  address,  and  forgot  every- 
thing  else.     Fair,    absolutely   fair,    magnanimous 


86  OVER  AGAINST  THE  TREASURY 


in  concession  of  everything  that  could  be  conceded, 
yet  he  says: 

"The  modern,  tolerant,  easy-going  attitude  of  some 
students  of  comparative  religion  is  not  the  attitude  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets,  nor  of  the  apostles  of  Jesus  Christ. 
They  never  saw  in  the  idolatry  of  man  any  upward  moving 
of  men's  hearts  toward  a  purer  faith.  They  denounced 
that  idolatry  as  puerile,  as  ignominious,  as  false,  as  sinful. 
*  *  *  Of  course  there  is  good  and  truth  in  the  non- 
Christian  religions.  It  is  that  good  and  truth  that  is  in 
them  that  has  enabled  them  to  survive,  that  gives  them 
their  great  power;  but  there  is  no  great  truth  in  the  non- 
Christian  religions  which  is  not  found  in  a  purer  and  richer 
form  in  the  Christian  religion.  In  Christianity  each  truth 
is  balanced  by  its  just  corrective.  Hindooism  teaches  that 
God  is  near,  but  forgets  that  he  is  holy;  Mohammedanism 
teaches  that  God  is  great,  but  forgets  that  he  is  loving; 
Buddhism  teaches  that  this  earthly  life  is  fleeting,  but 
forgets  that  we  must  therefore  work  the  works  of  God 
before  the  night  comes;  Confucianism  teaches  that  we  live 
in  the  midst  of  a  great  framework  of  human  relationships, 
but  forgets  that  in  the  midst  of  all  these  we  have  a  living 
help  and  a  personal  fellowship  with  the  eternal  God,  in 
whose  lasting  presence  is  our  home.  And  the  setting  in 
which  these  truths  are  found  in  the  non-Christian  religions 
makes  them  often  not  a  help  but  a  positive  hindrance  to 
men.  It  is  often  harder  to  convince  of  error  the  man  with 
the  half  truth  than  the  man  with  nothing  but  demonstrable 


And  the  speaker  proceeded  to  illustrate  the 
further  fact  that  these  non-Christian  religions  are 
seamed  through  and  through  with  great  and  posi- 
tive and  hideous  evils,  imbedded  in  the  religions 
and  deriving  their  most  terrible  power  from  the 


OF£i?  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY  87 


* 


religious  sanctions  by  which  they  are  surrounded, 
by  reference  to  the  positive  immorality  of  Hindooism, 
the  sterility  and  unprogressiveness  of  Buddhism, 
stamping  human  nature  as  evil  and  all  existence  as 
evil,  the  puerility  of  the  Shamanistic  and  fetichistic 
religions  of  Africa,  Korea  and  China,  the  stagna- 
tion, impotence  and  moral  inferiority  of  Moham- 
medanism. These  cannot  meet  the  intellectual 
needs  of  any  race  of  men,  nor  their  moral  needs, 
because  they  present  no  perfect  ideal,  offer  no 
living,  transforming  power,  give  no  real  conception 
of  sin,  nor  of  the  value  of  truth,  and  have  no  ade- 
quate sanctions.  Nor  can  they  meet  men's  social 
needs  in  their  debasement  of  women,  their  incapa- 
bility of  progress,  their  denial  of  the  unity  of  man- 
kind; nor  men's  spiritual  needs;  they  are  prac- 
tically atheistic,  do  not  teach  the  Fatherhood  of 
God,  speak  no  word  of  true  hope,  have  no  Calvary. 
"When  I  read  these  last  words  of  the  address," 
the  speaker  went  on,  "  I  was  brought  to  a  decision: 

"My  fellow-students,  as  the  owners  and  bearers  of  that 
name,  how  can  we  withhold  from  the  hearts  of  men  the 
sufficient  message  of  their  Father's  life,  their  Father's  love, 
made  known  alone  in  our  only  Lord  and  Saviour,  Jesus 
Christ  ? 

"It  is  all  true,  friends,  and  I  felt  that  it  was  true 
all  the  time  I  was  reading  it;  and  I  have  failed  to 
see  it  before  because  I  had  but  a  faint  and  feeble 
conception  of  what  Jesus  Christ  has  done  for  me. 
I  have  had  no  dream,  no  vision;  but  Jesus  Christ 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


is  tenfold  more  real  to  me  now  than  he  was  three 
hours  ago;  and  no  longer  by  me  shall  the  lamp  of 
life  be  denied  to  souls  who  are  indeed  benighted  in 
the  darkness  of  sin  and  ignorance  and  superstition, 
for  whom  there  is  but  one  sufficient  light,  which, 
with  the  blessing  of  God,  I  will  take  to  some  of 
them  while  life  is  spared." 

He  had  scarcely  ceased  speaking  when  a  man  of 
about  sixty  years  of  age,  president  of  a  large  manu- 
facturing concern,  rose  hurriedly  to  his  feet  and 
came  to  the  front.  He  was  a  Christian  man,  but 
one  whose  voice  had  seldom  been  heard  in  the 
church.  He  spoke  nervously,  but  with  much 
feeling: 

"Friends,  I  would  much  rather  say  nothing;  but 
my  life  has  been  too  long  open  to  your  view  for 
me  to  honorably  remain  silent.  You  know  how  I 
have  made  what  money  I  have — honestly,  I  be- 
lieve in  all  sincerity,  so  far  as  the  world's  ideas  of 
honesty  go.  I  have  never  been  a  miser,  nor  closed 
my  ears  altogether  to  the  cry  of  the  poor,  and  I 
have  contributed  to  public  improvements  and  some 
public  charities,  and  have  helped  to  support  the 
church.  But  I  have  come  to  the  mournful  con- 
clusion, during  these  past  few  days,  that  all  this  time 
that  I  have  maintained  a  reputation  for  honesty, 
I  have  been  robbing  God,  and  in  so  doing  robbing 
my  fellow-men. 

"  You  all  know  what  a  pride  I  have  taken  in  that 
new  house  of  mine;  how  my  wife  and  I  spent 
weeks  and  months  planning  how  we  should  tear 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


down  the  old  house,  good  as  it  was,  and  build 
greater,  though  we  had  not  a  chick  nor  a  child  in 
the  world.  Every  detail  was  studied  out,  and  no 
expense  was  spared  for  architect,  builder  or 
materials.  And  when  the  house  was  done,  we 
made  journeys  to  New  York  and  Boston,  and  up 
and  down  New  England,  to  find  things  both  new 
and  antique  to  harmonize  with  the  color  scheme, 
and  did  not  spare  ourselves  to  make  our  home  al- 
together the  most  attractive  in  Jaconsett.  And 
you  know  how,  when  the  house  was  done,  and  we 
had  pronounced  it  good,  and  were  ready  to  live 
in  it  and  enjoy  it,  suddenly  my  wife  was  taken  ill, 
the  doctors  could  do  nothing  for  her,  and  in  the 
course  of  a  few  weeks  she  died,  and  my  beautiful 
new  house  was  left  unto  me  desolate. 

"lama  Christian;  my  wife  was  a  Christian,  I 
sincerely  believe;  but  the  life  of  both  of  us  for 
many  years  past  has  been  that  of  the  man  who 
pulled  down  his  barns  and  built  greater,  and  said 
to  his  soul,  'Soul,  thou  hast  much  goods  laid  up 
for  many  years;  take  thine  ease,  eat,  drink,  be 
merry' ;  and  the  Lord  has  said  to  us  both, — to  my 
wife  in  one  way,  to  me  in  another, — 'Thou  fool- 
ish one,  this  night  is  thy  soul  required  of  thee; 
whose  then  shall  those  things  be  which  thou  hast 
provided?'  To  do  as  I  have  done,  it  has  been 
necessary  to  annually  rob  God  of  the  percentage  of 
my  profits  which  should  have  steadily  gone  into 
his  treasury  in  grateful  acknowledgment  of  the 
prosperity  which  he  has  given  me;  and  many  are  the 


90  OVER  AGAINST  THE   TREASURY 


men  who  must  have  perished  in  ignorance  and  sin 
because  I  have  robbed  them  of  the  chance  which 
God  had  directed  me  to  give  them  to  hear  the  word 
of  life. 

"  Friends,  my  grief  at  the  loss  of  my  companion 
a  few  weeks  ago  is  made  much  heavier  by  the 
realization  that  these  opportunities  lost  by  my 
selfishness  are  gone,  irretrievably  gone.  I  cannot 
bring  back  to  life  one  of  those  who  have  passed  out 
into  the  dark  through  my  neglect;  but  having 
sadly  awakened  to  the  realization  that  a  man's  life 
consisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things  which 
he  possesseth,  I  have  no  mind  longer  to  play  the 
fool,  but  will  henceforth  seek  to  be  rich  toward 
God. 

"As  proof  of  my  sincerity  in  this  resolution,  I 
shall  take  advantage  of  the  first  opportunity  to  sell 
my  new  house,  and  devote  the  proceeds  to  the  work 
of  missions,  at  home  and  abroad.  Meanwhile  I 
shall  be  delighted  to  assume  the  support  of  either 
of  these  two  young  men  who  have  just  volunteered 
for  foreign  mission  service.  And  I  thank  the  Lord 
that  he  has  opened  my  eyes  to  my  own  position,  to 
which  I  was  formerly  as  blind  as  the  rich  man  of  the 
parable.  Pray  for  me,  friends,  that  the  hard 
chastening  which  has  come  to  me  may  work  out  the 
peaceable  fruits  of  righteousness." 


OVER  AGAINST  THE   TREASURY  91 


CHAPTER  VII 

MR.  STANTON  was  about  to  call  for  prayer, 
when  a  young  business  man  arose,  saying: 
"  I  know  it  is  growing  late;  but  this  is  too 
important  a  time  to  adhere  closely  to  regular  hours, 
and  I  want  to  tell  you  some  thoughts  which  have 
been  burdening  my  mind  this  evening.  I  have 
been  taking  quite  an  interest  in  the  men's  move- 
ment, of  which  Brother  Waterson  was  speaking. 
I  have  not  had  the  means  to  take  the  tour  around 
the  world;  but  I  have  been  at  all  the  conventions 
of  the  movement.  Those  meetings  have  been 
mightily  inspiring,  I  assure  you.  As  one  sat  there 
he  could  feel  his  heart  burn  within  him,  and  no 
sum  seemed  too  great  to  raise  for  foreign  missions, 
that  the  great  Presbyterian  Church  might  do  its 
part  by  giving  the  light  to  its  million  people  in  the 
next  twenty  years.  What  were  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  or  two  million  dollars,  or  six 
million  dollars,  to  this  great  church?  All  it 
needed  was  information,  education,  interest,  and 
the  work  would  be  done. 

"  But,  friends,  have  you  noticed  one  thing  ?  The 
thought  has  been  thrusting  itself  upon  me— and 
most  unwelcome  it  has  been — that  the  men's  boards 
and  the  women's  boards  and  the  young  people's 
movements,  and  the  brotherhoods  and  the  sister- 
hoods, have  been  announcing  annually  that  the 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


problem   had   been   solved,    that   a   campaign   of 
education   and   information   and   inspiration    had 
now  been  inaugurated  which  was  going  to  bring 
men  and  women  and  money  to  the  boards  in  such 
abundance  that  the   world   could  be  evangelized 
in  this  generation.     And  I  have  been  told  by  a 
missionary  friend  that  the  board  secretaries  an- 
nually write  to  them  saying  something  like  this: 
'We  have  just   engaged  such  and  such  men  to 
assist  in  the  home  department,  or  act  as  district 
secretaries;   and  they,  in  consultation  with  us,  are 
adopting  this  and  that  and  the  other  new  scheme 
to  secure  a  contribution  from  every  member  of  the 
church   and   every   child   in   the   Sunday   school. 
Keep  up  your  courage:    the  sympathies  of  the 
church  are  with  you;  they  are  deeply  interested  in 
your  work;    and  when  the  financial  depression  is 
past,  and  the  presidential  election  is  over,  we  shall 
see  a  better  day.     The  General  Assembly  was  en- 
thusiastic over  the  foreign  mission  report  and  the 
speeches  of  the  missionaries  present,  and  we  have 
great  hopes  for  the  future.'     Shouldn't  you  think 
the  missionaries  would  be  made  very  happy  by  that 
sort  of  assurances  ?     Alasj  friends,  that  same  mis- 
sionary told  me  that  that  sort  of  letters  has  usually 
followed  another  sort,   in  which  the  mission  was 
regretfully  informed  that,  in  spite  of  all  the  board 
could  do,  and  in  spite  of  all  the  new  measures  for 
interesting  the  church,  the  board  had  closed  its 
year  with   a   deficit   of  ninety   thousand   dollars, 
which,   added  to  the  last  year's  deficit  of  eighty 


OVER  AGAINST   THE    TREASURY 


' 


thousand  dollars,  made  one  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  dollars  to  burden  the  income  of  another 
year.  And  in  view  of  these  distressing  financial 
facts,  it  was  naturally  impossible  for  the  board  to 
provide  for  the  growing  work  any  more  than  had 
been  provided  the  year  before;  nothing  could  be 
granted  for  new  property,  and  new  missionaries 
could  be  sent  only  to  fill  vacancies.  That  is  not  one 
year's  record,  but,  with  variations,  the  record  of 
many  years.  Yet  our  agencies  and  institutions  to 
'interest'  the  church  have  been  multiplying  tre- 
mendously the  past  few  years. 

"I  tell  you,  friends,  when  I  heard  that,  I  could 
not  help  wondering  whether  what  the  church 
needed  was  'interesting,'  or  such  an  overwhelming 
realization  of  the  great  facts  of  God  and  Satan  and 
sin  and  salvation  and  heaven  and  hell,  and  Christ 
man's  only  Saviour,  whether  he  be  Jew  or  Gentile, 
Christian  or  heathen,  as  shall  make  us  feel  as  Christ 
felt  about  the  lost  wTorld.  The  'interest'  of  mission 
study  classes,  and  libraries  and  magazines  and  costly 
round-the-world  tours  and  splendid,  expensive  con- 
ventions may  be  a  large  rate  of  interest  on  a  very 
small  capital.  The  question  is  not  so  much  how 
much  interest  you  and  I  get  out  of  foreign  missions 
as  it  is  how  much  capital  we  put  into  them.  How 
much  stock  do  we  take  in  them?  I'll  guarantee 
that  there  will  be  no  lack  of  the  best  kind  of  interest 
in  foreign  missions  when  our  capital  is  invested 
there.  Just  look  at  the  interest  of  that  big  Presby- 
terian elder,  who  has  invested  some  hundreds  of 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


thousands,  not  of  cold  dollars,  but  of  warm  ones 
fresh  from  the  heart,  on  his  world  tour!  Where  his 
treasure  is,  there  his  heart  is;  and  I  believe  the 
other  side  is  true  also,  that  where  the  heart  is, 
there  the  treasure  is  also  pretty  likely  to  be  put. 
"In  a  book  I  was  reading  the  other  day  I  came 
across  a  few  sentences  on  this  subject  which  are 
well  worth  repeating: 

"The  interest  of  the  child  is  childlike;  but  the  mere 
interest  of  the  adult  is  childish.  Let  us  have  interest  in 
the  Sunday  school,  but  let  us  have  passion  in  the  church. 
We  must  expect  more  from  the  church  than  an  interest 
in  that  work  of  redemption,  for  which  the  Christ,  whose 
followers  we  are,  endured  the  agony  of  a  Gethsemane  and 
the  heartbreak  of  a  Calvary.  The  Master  went  to  his  death 
amidst  apparent  failure  and  defeat,  content  to  foresee 
the  result  of  that  travail  of  his  soul  which  should  satisfy. 
Must  it  be  said  that  his  church  can  only  carry  on  his  work 
as  she  sees  successes  carefully  tabulated  into  statistics, 
which  will  enable  her  to  work  out  the  ratio  between  souls 
saved  and  guineas  subscribed?  Can  the  work  which  was 
initiated  by  the  passion  of  the  Christ  only  be  carried  on  as 
it  appeals  to  the  interest  of  the  church  ? 


"During  the  past  three  or  four  days  our  church 
here  has  shown  a  kind  of  interest  far  ahead  of  that 
which  holds  great  conventions  and  promises  mil- 
lions,— next  year, — and  lets  the  board  close  its  year 
one  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  dollars  in  debt. 
We  are  now  experiencing  something  of  the  passion, 
because  we  have  seen  the  vision.  The  church  as 
a  whole  lacks  the  vision  which  you  and  I  have 
had;    that  is  the  trouble.      Don't   for  a   moment 


I 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


' 


95 


think  that  I  don't  believe  in  these  conventions 
and  tours  and  promises;  I  believe  in  them  most 
heartily,  but  they  are  not  the  whole  thing,  nor 
even  a  very  large  part  of  the  whole;  they  are  simply 
the  prospectus.  God  forbid  that  the  men's  move- 
ment should  prove  to  be  all  on  paper  or  in  the 
air.  The  missionaries  and  the  home  church  are 
looking  to  it  most  hopefully,  saying,  'Heretofore 
we  have  been  playing;  now  we  are  going  to  have 
business  principles  applied,  for  the  first  time,  on  a 
large  scale,  to  foreign  missions.'  God  grant  they 
may  not  be  disappointed! 

"  Excuse  me  for  talking  so  much  about  other 
people  instead  of  myself;  but  really  these  remarks 
are  of  the  nature  of  a  confession,  for  they  are  only 
the  development  of  these  few  days  of  a  new  view 
of  Christ.  And,  for  the  first  time,  I  have  made  my 
offering  on  the  new  basis." 

Again  the  pastor  was  about  to  vary  the  meeting, 
but  his  people  proved  irrepressible.  Several  arose 
to  their  feet  at  once,  among  them  a  lady,  to  whom 
the  men  at  once  gave  place.  A  well-to-do  member 
of  the  church,  decidedly  a  society  woman,  all  were 
eager  to  hear  what  she  had  to  say,  especially  when 
they  saw  the  strange  new  look  of  mingled  grief  and 
resolution  on  her  face. 

"  Friends,  you  will  be  surprised  to  hear  from  me, 
I  know;  but  when  I  think  of  the  number  of  mis- 
sionaries and  native  preachers  and  teachers  that 
I  have  eaten  and  drunk  and  worn  in  society  life, 
and  that  I  have  seen  my  friends  burn,  my  face  feels 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


fairly  scorching  with  shame.  Mind  you,  I  don't 
mean  that  I  have  come  to  believe  that  God  does 
not  mean  us  to  have  a  good  time.  Jesus  himself 
attended  and  blessed  a  wedding,  and  graced  many 
a  feast  with  his  presence;  but  he  never  esteemed 
the  social  whirl  an  object  in  itself  and  for  itself 
worthy  of  the  devotion  of  his  life  and  the  neglect 
of  other  things — and  I  have.  There  are  mission- 
aries at  my  home  now,  laid  up  in  jewel  cases,  and 
others  in  safety-deposit  vaults  at  the  bank.  It  is 
true  that  I  have  not  gone  so  far  in  luxurious  self- 
indulgence  as  the  woman  of  whom  I  heard  the 
other  day,  whose  seaside  house,  occupied  for  six 
or  eight  weeks  in  the  year,  cost  two  million  dollars, 
and  who  refused  to  let  it  for  a  season  for  two 
hundred  thousand  dollars;  but  the  chief  reason 
why  I  have  not  is,  that  I  do  not  possess  such  sums 
of  money.  I  never  have  thought  of  my  time  or 
my  money  or  my  voice~or  my  house  or  myself  as 
really  belonging  to  God,  to  be  used  for  him,  though 
I  doubtless  have  heard  our  pastor  state  the  fact  a 
great  many  times,  and  accepted  it  in  a  general  way, 
which  never  made  a  whit  of  difference  in  my  life. 
"It  was  largely  from  the  force  of  a  habit  estab- 
lished as  a  child  (bless  God  for  such  habits,  even 
if  they  are  nothing  more)  that  I  attended  service 
last  Sunday  morning.  The  vision  of  the  Master 
began  its  work  then;  but  it  had  a  hard  subject  to 
work  on,  and  even  attendance  at  the  evening  ser- 
vice did  not  suffice  to  condemn  and  shame  me  tu 
myself.     I  knew  that  things  could  not  go  on  as 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


they  had  been  going;  but  I  rebelled  against  any 
change,  and  could  see  no  prospect  of  happiness  in 
this  life  except  in  the  society  life  which  has  filled 
my  heart  until  now.  Monday  did  not  bring  peace; 
Tuesday  did  not  bring  peace;  and  only  to-night 
have  I  found  it,  as  I  have  been  able  to  assent  to 
the  words  that  have  been  spoken  here  by  one  after 
another;  and  the  real  things  of  life  have  stood  out 
before  me  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  unreal  and,  after 
all,  most  unsatisfying — because  incomplete  and 
fleeting — pleasures  which  have  been  mine.  If  he 
will  accept  me,  I  mean  to  be  henceforth  one  of 
the  companions  of  the  present  Christ;  and  I  shall 
make  it  my  first  business  to-morrow  to  release  some 
of  my  tied-up  or  locked-up  missionaries  and  send 
them  about  the  business  which  has  so  long  been 
calling  in  vain  for  them." 

Several  others  were  on  their  feet  to  speak  at 
once;  but  the  one  who  finally  caught  the  ear  of  the 
house  was  a  young  man  with  a  strong  voice  and 
an  evidently  decided  intention  to  be  heard. 

"You  haven't  heard  a  word  from  the  doctors 
yet,"  he  said,  "and  there  are  a  number  of  us  here. 
Indeed,  it's  a  wonder  what  Jaconsett  does  with  all 
her  doctors.  There  are  streets  where  you  can 
count  four  or  five  in  a  row,  and  more  on  the  next 
block.  For  a  city  with  as  good  a  health  record  as 
Jaconsett,  I  think  we  are  pretty  well  supplied,  and 
competition  grows  a  bit  keen  at  times,  as  I  can 
testify  since  Dr.  Jenkins  moved  in  next  door  with 
an  enviable  Pittsburg  reputation. 


fe 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


TnT 


"  Well  now,  really,  when  you  come  to  think  of  it, 
doesn't  it  seem  a  preposterous  absurdity  for  the 
fine  young  men  to  be  crowding  into  this  profession 
and  then  hanging  out  their  shingles  in  a  fashionable 
street,  right  next  door  to  three  or  four  more,  while 
there  are  great  cities  in  the  world  which  have  never 
seen  a  doctor  in  the  least  worthy  of  the  name,  and 
where  the  people  are  born  and  grow  up  and  are 
married  and  raise  families,  and  suffer  from  all 
sorts  of  painful  and  loathsome  diseases,  with  no 
one  familiar  with  the  simplest  remedies  to  aid 
them,  and  plenty  of  people  familiar  with  the  most 
complex  witches'  broths  to  pour  down  by  the 
gallon,  and  most  disgusting  and  torturing  plasters 
and  ointments  to  apply  by  the  yard,  and  where 
thousands  die  who  might  have  lived,  and  thousands 
live  who  would  vastly  better  die?  Does  it  strike 
you  as  exactly  in  accordance  with  the  American 
sense  of  the  eternal  fitness  of  things  for  such  a 
state  of  things  to  continue,  especially  when  you 
add  the  farther  fact  that  the  vast  majority  of  these 
poor  aching,  twitching,  mortifying,  dying  creatures 
have  no  knowledge  at  all  of  another  world  of 
opportunity  and  blessing  and  fullness  of  life  beyond 
this  one? 

"  Now,  I'm  not  going  to  urge  the  last  men  who 
have  come  into  our  community  to  give  up  the  losing 
battle  and  go  to  China.  It  so  happens,  no  one  can 
tell  why,  that  I  have  secured  more  than  my  share 
of  paying  practice  in  the  competition.  The  rest 
of  the  doctors  in  Jaconsett  may  have  it  for  the 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


winning,  for  I  am  going  to  China,  and  at  my  own 
charges." 

"And  I'll  go  with  you";  "And  I";  called  out, 
in  most  undignified  fashion,  two  of  Dr.  Corson's 
most  intimate  friends  in  the  profession.  Then  one 
or  two  persons  of  little  faith  began  to  tremble  lest 
an  epidemic  strike  the  city,  and  there  be  not  enough 
doctors  to  go  around! 

It  was  a  fitting  conclusion,  and  time  to  stop. 
Mr.  Stanton  interposed  by  starting  the  long  meter 
doxology,  after  which  he  said: 

"Lord,  thou  hast  searched  us  and  known  us. 
And,  in  the  discovery  of  ourselves  to  ourselves,  thou 
hast  brought  us  blessing  far  beyond  our  most 
sanguine  anticipations,  for  we  have  learned  to 
know  thee,  the  only  living  and  true  God,  and  Jesus 
Christ  whom  thou  has  sent;  and  this  is  eternal 
life.  Oh,  give  us  that  life  yet  more  abundantly, 
until  in  very  deed  for  us  to  live  shall  be  Christ,  and 
we  shall  have  no  will,  nor  desire  to  have,  apart 
from  the  perfect,  the  beautiful  will  of  God.  Accept 
thou  the  living  sacrifices  which  have  been  laid  so 
willingly  on  thine  altar;  and  accept  thou  in  like 
manner  those  other  sacrifices  which  represent  the 
life  of  those  who  cannot  in  person  heed  thy  great 
commission  and  go  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth,  those  whose  work  lies  here,  but  who  are  un- 
willing that  the  outreach  of  their  hearts  after  thy 
lost  ones  shall  be  limited  by  any  country  or  any 
race.  Forgive  all  the  past  mistakes  and  failures 
that  have  been  confessed,  before  thee,  in  public  or 


100 


OVER  AGAINST   THE   TREASURY 


in  the  secret  chamber;  bless  to  the  nations  of  the 
world  what  we  are  now  doing  and  resolve  to  do; 
and  make  each  one  of  us,  and  all  who  call  them- 
selves thy  disciples,  henceforth  and  forever,  com- 
panions of  the  present  Christ.  In  his  ever  blessed 
name,  Amen." 

The  service  closed;  the  congregation  was  dis- 
missed; yet,  in  spite  of  the  lateness  of  the  hour  the 
people  seemed  in  no  haste  to  disperse.  Many  who 
had  given  no  public  testimony  were  disposed  to 
linger  and  talk  with  friends,  or  with  their  pastor, 
of  their  new  relations  with  the  Master  and  of  the 
limitless  outreach  of  the  possibilities  which  had 
opened  up  for  themselves  and  for  the  kingdom. 

That  was  not  the  last  meeting  at  which  were 
heard  echoes  of  Foreign  Missionary  Sunday  in 
Jaconsett.  Other  churches  were  aroused,  and  the 
movement  spread  to  other  denominations  and  other 
cities  until  there  was  accomplished  in  actual  fact, 
by  the  spirit-filled  companions  of  the  present 
Christ,  that  which  so  many  " movements"  had 
undertaken  and  only  partially  succeeded  in  ac- 
complishing— the  actual  winning,  for  the  work  of 
taking  Christ  to  the  world,  of  both  the  hearts  and 
the  treasures  of  the  church,  which  Christ  so  long 
ago  redeemed  to  himself  in  his  precious  blood,  and 
which  he  had  then  commissioned  for  this  very 
purpose. 


r 


17750TB   161 

11-13-03  32180      MS 


Princeton  Theoloqica    Seminar]/  Libraries 


1    1012  0 


278  6416 


